CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, U.S.A., December 26, 2008: The U.S. economic recession is wreaking havoc on the lives and hopes of refugees here. In the past, a refugee in America would receive a few months of assistance, find a job with modest wages and work hard to achieve a more secure economic footing. Historically, according to government figures, about 70% succeed. But now, jobs are increasingly scarce, federal resettlement funding has been scant, and local charities are stretched thin. Many refugees, still jobless and soon to lose the assistance they had been receiving, are faced with the prospect of being homeless in a strange land.
David Siegel directs the federal office of refugee resettlement. Siegel says right now, he has no more money. He says his hands are tied by a continuing budget resolution that limits spending at last year’s level. He hopes things will be better in 2009.
Most refugees seem to agree that as difficult as things might be here, they are infinitely better than life in a refugee camp. But Bhima Acharya, who arrived in Concord five months ago with her husband and three children, thinks her friends back in the refugee camps ought to stay there until the economy improves. Although she and her husband have applied at dozens of companies, he has only found three days’ work in all that time. Their financial assistance is coming to an end, and they don’t know how they will pay the rent in January or even provide food for their children.