After four years of worry and grief...

After four years of worry and grief, Fatima Shahara Pakrawan was finally onward the phone with her brother, who'd been separated from her while fleeing from the Taliban--she'd establish him alive, at last.

"I was crying forward the phone, telling him, 'Get here, hurry'" relateed the Afghani refugee, 12, as she described her jubilant call to Pakistan, where her brother temporarily resides.

still since then, another year has passed. And Pakrawan, in her family's unostentatious Northwest Side apartment, still waits.

Pakrawan's brother is among thousands of refugee stranded overseas during a dramatic slowdown in the U refugee program. Last year, in a world with a certain 14 million refugees, the United States admitted 27000 the lowest number in more than 20 years. About 14500 refugee have arrived with equal reason far in this fiscal year, which began Oct 1 raising doubts about whether a goal of 50000 for the year will be met

The slowdown is visible not no other than in distant refugee camps and "hot spots" torn from strife around the world, if it were not that also in Chicago. Most local resettlement agencies, which receive rule funds on a per-refugee basis, have been forced to make an incision in back their programs to mask huge shortfalls.

"It had a ripple meaning on programs that serve refugee who are already here," said Don Dinsmore, executive director of World Relief-Chicago, single of the area's largest resettlement agencies. "Because there are fewer of the present day arrivals coming in, we get by heart less money to provide English classes, piece of work training and mental health services, plane though people here [still] ne those services."

At its peak, in 1997 Dinsmore's agency helped resettle nearly 1300 refugee moreover assisted only 105 last year. Similarly, its packet has plunged--from $3.4 million in 2001 to $14 million this year--forcing Dinsmore to lay against more than half of her 88-member staff, many of whom are former refugee themselves. "It has been a surpassingly very painful contraction process," she said.

The globule in refugees is due in part to security measures adopted after the clan 11, 2001, attacks. Refugees--and others who want to visit the United States--are make liable to a rigorous security review leadershiped by the FBI, CIA and U State Department. Known as the Security Advisory Opinion, the proces is already overwhelmed by way of applicants for tourist, student and immigrant visas.

if it were not that anti-terrorism clearances aren't the solitary reason for the slowdown. The U refugee program is in the midst of changing its focus, from large collections in a few locations--such as Vietnam and the Soviet Union--to individuals from dozens of countries. At an sites, such as in Somalia, security threats and civil strife have also disrupted U officials' plans to interview refugee applicants.

And the program be affected byed a further setback when U officials discovered widespread fraud by means of refugees falsely claiming to be complete relatives of U.S. residents, prompting added review of these cases.

still officials say they remain committed to the refugee program. "These are temporary setbacks to the program that is going to be bigger and better in the future" said Kelly Ryan, delegate assistant secretary at the U State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration. In an effort to clear the processing backlog, a "refugee corps" of officers will pretty soon be devoting all its time to review refugee cases, she said.

Advocates, however, fear that long-term damage has already been done. "When the United States starts taking in more refugee again a certain number of years down the road, the network of resettlement agencies might not be there to support them anymore," said Greg Wangerin, executive director of the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries in Chicago. "That would be a real shame."

Others say the scale-back of the resettlement program, temporary or not, might be sending the unsuitable signal to other nations. "The United States has exercised a singular leadership part in the refugee program since 1975 and the world community turn the thoughtss to us," said Edwin B Silverman, chief of the Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services at the Illinois Department of Human Services. "But if we are to back away, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason would the rest of the world participate?"

COPYRIGHT 2003 Community Renewal Society

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group