WBEZ 91.5
January 9, 2013
A listener wonders if the city’s behind placement there and, if not, who is?
From WBEZ 91.5:
Chicago may have a deeply entrenched history of segregation, but some pockets on the North Side are as diverse as one might hope to find anywhere. One reason: Chicago’s far North Side has been a port of entry for thousands of refugees since the first wave came from Vietnam in 1975.
Lowell Wyse, a resident of Rogers Park, has noticed the international flavor in his neighborhood, and that got him wondering:
Does the city actively participate in resettling international refugees in certain neighborhoods, such as Rogers Park?
Refugees come to Illinois through a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of State, nine private agencies called voluntary agencies (or, “Volags”) and the local non-profit resettlement agencies that do most of the ground work. In Chicago, six resettlement agencies are contractually obligated to provide services to help refugee families relocate and integrate to the greatest extent possible within their first three months in the U.S. They are RefugeeONE, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, World Relief, Heartland Human Care Services, Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Chicago.
“The city could play a role, but has not in the past,” said Edwin Silverman. Silverman is the Illinois State Refugee Coordinator, overseeing that partnership between the State Department and local agencies. “There was a period in the early ‘80s when the city was at the table, represented by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations,” Silverman explained. “The CCHR had, up until the Emanuel administration, an advisory council on immigrant and refugee affairs.” The city eliminated that advisory council in last year’s budget cuts.
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