Pipestone County Commissioners voted during their Jan. 7 meeting to allow refugee resettlement in the county.
The action was necessary due to an executive order issued by Pres. Donald Trump on Sept. 26, 2019 that requires state and local governments to provide written consent to the federal government before refugees can be resettled in their jurisdictions. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz submitted a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in December giving consent for refugees to be resettled in Minnesota.
Pipestone County Administrator Steve Ewing said he will send a letter expressing the county’s consent to the Minnesota Department of Human Service’s (DHS) Resettlement Programs Office. From there it will be routed to local resettlement affiliates and submitted to the U.S. Department of State.
During a brief discussion prior to voting 4-0 to allow refugees to resettle in the county, the commissioners spoke of the potential economic benefits of having refugees resettle in a community; of the federal funding available to help refugees resettle; and of personal experiences with refugees and their families. Commissioner Bruce Kooiman was absent.
The county joins at least 18 other counties in the state, including Murray and Nobles counties, that have already voted in favor of accepting refugees. Rock, Lincoln and Lyon county officials said their commissioners will take up the issue. Lyon County Administrator Loren Stomberg said Lyon County Commissioners had the topic on their Jan. 7 agenda, but chose to call a special meeting for Jan. 28 to discuss it further after several community members objected to having Lyon County allow refugees.
Katie Bauer, public information officer with DHS, said there are at least 13 counties DHS is aware of that have tabled the issue at recent meetings. Only Beltrami County in northern Minnesota has reportedly voted to block refugee resettlement.
Local resettlement agencies must submit next year’s placement strategies to the U.S. Department of State by Jan. 31. If a local government does not provide consent before that, it’s possible that refugees may not be resettled there in 2020, according to DHS.
Refugees and
resettlement
Refugees are defined as people who have been forced to flee their home countries due to violence or persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, according to DHS.
Most people seeking refugee status first register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the country to which they have fled, according to the U.S. Department of State. The UNHCR determines if an individual qualifies as a refugee and if they should be returned to their home country, integrated locally or permanently resettled in a third country. According to UNHCR, 27 countries accepted almost 55,700 refugees in 2018.
Refugees referred to the U.S. undergo an extensive vetting process that involves the departments of Homeland Security, State, Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services, the National Counterterrorism Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to DHS. Approximately 20 different assessments are conducted prior to a refugee’s arrival, including global database searches, background checks, biometric security checks, interviews and security reviews.
If a refugee clears that process, the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PMR) has a working agreement with nine nonprofit agencies nationwide to place them. Those national entities work with local affiliates across the country. In Minnesota, the local affiliates are Arrive Ministries, Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota, Minnesota Council of Churches, Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota and the International Institute of Minnesota.
Bob Oehrig, executive director of Arrive Ministries, said his agency is an affiliate of the national agency World Relief. Most of the time, he said, refugees are placed based on preference. About 95 percent of those who resettle in Minnesota do so to be near family members who are already in the state.
If a refugee has no family to rejoin, the Department of State assigns them to one of the national agencies and the national agency refers them to one of its local affiliates throughout the country based on that local agency’s capacity. For 2020, Oehrig said Arrive Ministries was approved to place 104 refugees. The local agency then places the refugee based on a community’s capacity as far as available housing, schools, work and other factors.
Oehrig said Arrive Ministries and the other agencies provide case management services, and help the refugees find housing, connect with language services, navigate their new community, obtain Social Security cards, establish bank accounts and provide other support to help them start life in a new place. They also help them obtain clothing, furniture and other necessities.
Oehrig said the State Department provides the agencies with $1,000 for each refugee they place to help provide those services. The agencies also receive funds from corporate, private and faith-based donors.
Each refugee also receives a one-time allotment of $1,125 from the Department of State. Oehrig said the local agencies administer the funds, which are provided to help the refugees pay for rent, groceries and other necessities until they secure jobs.
Each year DHS’s Resettlement Programs Office receives approximately $5 million in federal funds to support the statewide resettlement of refugees and their integration into Minnesota Communities.
Oehrig said it’s important for refugees to obtain jobs once they are settled because after six months they have to start paying back the federal government for air fare and other travel expenses related to their transportation to the U.S.
“It’s not like they’re getting a free ride,” Oehrig said.
Typically, he said, the refugees he works with arrive ready and willing to work.
“They want to work,” he said. “They want to see something better for their family than they’ve experienced.”
Oehrig said historically most of the refugees who have settled in Minnesota are Karen, Bhutanese, Somali, Congolese and from the former Soviet Union. In southwest Minnesota, he said many Karen people have settled in Marshall and Worthington.
Oehrig said the reasons the refugees have fled their countries of origin vary, but that there is often tension or active war in the countries they come from and they are at risk of persecution or death due to their religious, social or political affiliations.
Local resettlement
Information from DHS shows that one refugee resettled in Pipestone County in the last five years and that was in fiscal year 2017. Among Minnesota counties, Ramsey County has taken in the largest number of refugees over the last five years at 4,215 with Hennepin County second with 1,345.
There have been 8,128 refugees who have resettled in Minnesota as a whole over the last five years, with decreasing numbers in recent years. The five-year high was 3,059 refugees in fiscal year 2016 and the low was 663 in 2018. There were 848 refugees who settled in Minnesota in 2019.
DHS attributes the decline in recent years to “the Trump administration’s annual lowering of the national admissions cap.” The cap for fiscal year 2020 is 18,000, which is the lowest in U.S. history, according to DHS. The ceiling was 30,000 in 2019 and 45,000 in 2018, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Oehrig said the cap was over 200,000 in the 1980s and had typically been around 75,000 to 80,000 over the last 20 years prior to Trump taking office.
According to the UNHCR, there are 25.9 million refugees in the world.
“About .5 percent of the world’s refugees ever get resettled to another country,” Oehrig said.
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