Fort Wayne has a large community of Burmese, many of them refugees from the country, which was taken over in a military coup with a crackdown on the democratic opposition.
Lawrence Barlett, director of the Refugee Admissions Office of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and Shelly Peterman, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' regional representative for the United States and the Caribbean, met Thursday with local government officials, refugees and others.
Their meeting were held at Catholic Charities. The nonprofit organization, a mission of the Catholic Church, is one of the major resettlement organizations in Fort Wayne for refugees.
About 850 Burmese refugees arrived in Fort Wayne in 2008, 600 the year before, joining an estimated 5,000 already here.
In the first meeting of the day, Barlett and Pitterman were there to answer questions or concerns that Catholic Charities and some of its clients might have. The majority of the Catholic Charities clients who came were Burmese refugees. One of many questions they are concerned with is if the refugee camps along the Thai border are being dismantled and if so, what would happen to the programs that have been in place to move qualified refugees to the United States? Some of the people in the camps have already been approved. The Irwawaddy News Magazine, the “independent publication" that covers Burma and Southeast Asia from a Burmese perspective, had recently reported that the camps would be dismantled and refugees resettled back into Burma.
“That's not true,” Barlett said.
The resettlement program in Thailand is winding down, Barlett said. The camps are not closing. The US will continue to provide assistance to the camps; people can stay there as long as they want. The only reason they are shutting down the resettlement program is because most of the people in the original group have been resettled, but there are still a number of people who are qualified for resettlement still in the camps who now need to make a decision to come to America or stay in Thailand. The resettlement program in Malaysia in not shutting down and will keep operating.
Barlett said as the Burmese resettlement program winds down the majority of the agency's resettlement numbers will be coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Barlett said they are trying to hold their numbers at a steady 25 percent as they bring people in instead of hitting those high peaks like they did with the Burmese in 2007-08.
When that happened, Debbie Schmidt, Catholic Charities' eecutive director, said they quickly realized needed services were not in place for the large numbers they received, which caused some issues within the community.
Since then the department has worked to smooth the process, Barlett said, to make sure it is a moderate steady flow instead of a high number all at once.
Forty-nine out of the 50 states have resettlement programs for refugees. From October 2012 through this month refugees from East Asia have made up nearly 24.2 percent of the number of refugees coming into the United States with nearly 23.63 percent coming from Africa. It should be remembered that refugees are not eligible for the resettlement program until they have been displaced from their homeland for five years. So although thousands have recently fled Syria, it will be another five years before any of them are eligible to come to the United States. The only way to get around this is to get a priority status, such as life- threatening medical conditions that could make them eligible, Barlett said.
Barlett asked the refugees how they liked living in Fort Wayne, and overall they enjoy it. However some concern was expresses over elderly refugees who have never been to school and have a hard time applying for their citizenship. Even if they do get their citizenship they do not have a 30-year work history to be eligible for Social Security. At the moment there is no solution to this problem, although Barlett referred them to Matt Schomburg, Indiana's refugee coordinator in the Division of Family Resources Indiana Family and Social Services Administration and Catholic Charities.
Meetings continued throughout the day with various groups involved with the refugees, including the Burmese Advocacy Center, the Catherine Kasper Place, and government and health officials.
Barlett started his tour in Indianapolis and will wrap things up in Detroit on Friday before heading back to Washington D.C.
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