Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society can’t find enough housing in San Fran for gay ‘refugees’ (from South Africa)
Posted by Ann Corcoran on July 30, 2015
Ho hum! So we are bringing refugees from the highly touted welcoming-to-all “Rainbow Nation” of South Africa, dropping them off in San Francisco and now whining about how there isn’t enough housing for them. Maybe one of the well-paid staffers at theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) might welcome this gay refugee to their home!
A long sob story at the Bay Area Reporter:
“Our biggest challenge in helping these people is to find housing for them,” said Amy Weiss, the director of refugee and immigrant services at Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay. “They come with no employment history and no housing history. San Francisco is hard enough to find housing if you have an income. It is a huge problem for us and for them and to anybody resettling refugees.”
The agency is believed to be the only one in the country that has developed a specific program to work with LGBT refugees. It began four years ago when a number of Iranian LGBT refugees, who had fled to Turkey, needed help resettling in the U.S.
Since then the agency has worked with a number of LGBT refugees, mostly gay men from Africa and the Middle East. In November Junior Mayema arrived from Capetown, South Africa, where he had fled five years ago from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Then look at this, even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees refers to the attack (the star of this story claimed he suffered) as an “alleged attack.” So, he was resettled in America even though it was never proven he was attacked in S. Africa?
UNHCR staff, after learning about Mayema’s alleged attack, referred his case for resettlement last summer. Four months later, according to the account, he was granted refugee status and, in November, arrived in the Bay Area where he received assistance from the Jewish agency and a local church-sponsored group in acclimating to his new surroundings.
And, by the way, as we admit hundreds of refugees from the supposedly welcoming country of South Africa, you can bet there are few if any persecuted white people in the group. I wonder if a white person pretended to be gay or lesbian and said he or she was attacked, could they get in to the US from South Africa? ...