Mr. Chairman. by the end of the fiscal year. nearly 150 Hmong refugees will be reunited with their families in the 18th Congressional District of California. It is morally right for us to allow these families to be reunified after decades of separation. However. it is morally imperative that the Federal Government assure the communities of the resettlement that their new residents will not place undue strain on already scarce local resources. Unfortunately in the past. this commitment has never been fully met. The underlying law. which establishes cash and medical assistance to refugees. provides such assistance to continue for 36 months. The appropriations bill before us today provides assistance for only 8 months. For many refugees unfamiliar with life in the United States. 8 months of assistance is simply not enough. The 8 months ends. but the need remains for much longer. Invariably. it is the State and local communities which are left to fill the void. This is unacceptable. The amendment which I offer today would increase refugee cash and medical assistance levels to the point at which they would reach their 36month threshold authorized in law. In reality. the need is much greater. even than that. even than my amendment today. Mr. Chairman. proposes. Many refugees require aid as long as they live here. The number in my amendments are the best estimates of those who administer th program based on the broad numbers assumptions. but the fact is clear. the money in the appropriation bill on the floor today does not even begin to cover the cost of the refugees and assimilate the refugees into their new communities. The burden they are placing on social services is breaking the back of communities like my home community of Merced County. In Merced County. CA. in my district. the unemployment rate is over 20 percent. and almost half of the population is in some sort of public assistance program. Clearly. comnunities such as Merced need to be compensated. and this needs to be thoroughly thought out. and they need help under these very difficult circumstances in assimilating additional refugees into the community. We must begin to increase our sensitivity to this issue. Granted. many of these problems transcend finances. It is undisputed that structural changes are necessary in the way we resettle refugees. and I have been working with the gentleman from Wisconsin and the chairman of the committee on legislation to achieve this muchneeded change. But in the meantime. the issue of money is not trivial. It is extremely important. I am pleased that this year the office of refugee resettlement received a comparably generous level of funding in this lean budgetary time. Yet the amount is still pale in comparison to what local communities need and to the funding level originally intended by Congress. I am hopeful that the committee in the future will impart the greatness. at least discuss the importance of the Federal responsibility in this area. and would ask the chairman and the ranking member if they would just for a moment engage me in a colloquy on this matter.
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refugees refugee