Bollinger's Blog
Another Day of Red Tape / Jan 28, 10:36 AM
Seeing as I have done a rather poor job of keeping ‘more recent updates’ available on the blog, I wanted to just give a little bit of a tale from my adventures today. They were normal experiences, but offer a good insight into the unusually mundane around here.
Last week one of my friends (and World Relief refugee clients) asked me to help him move his bed into his new apartment. I drove up at the same time he did (by taxi) and the cabby asked me to help him. The driver said my friend was trying to set an appointment with him to go to a hospital in one week but my friend didn’t know the address. So I told the cabby I’d find out where and took his number to set the appointment. I say all that to point out a persistent justice issue for our neighbors who are refugees: they are so confused by and scared of the public transportation system that they regularly will dish out 10 times as much of their precious little money to take a ride with a taxi driver who speaks their language (or something near to it like Swahili or maybe Arabic).
By their 3rd month here, refugees’ case workers can no longer transport them in the organizations’ vehicles (they’ve neither the time nor the funding); consequently, case workers train their clients to use MARTA (the public system) and pray they will take it to heart (insert Petition that reader consider volunteering to help a refugee near them, call me if want to know more). Many simply don’t or won’t use MARTA (often presuming that surely the caseworker is not serious and that they will continue to be chauffeured when they need to go somewhere). My friend is one of those who is simply afraid. Nonetheless, he has immunizations to continue to get so he isn’t kicked out of his job for falling behind and little to time to get them before he must be at the 3pm rendezvous for his vanpool to work 2nd shift at the chicken plant 1.5 hours north of here (the nearest living wage to be found). So I said I would go with him (notice I did not say I would drive him).
Fast forward to today… I met him and he asked if his friend (another one of our very sweet clients from his country who is a single mom with three kids under the age of four) could come with us. In Georgia, like many states, kids under 7 have to have carseats or you get a BIG fine. I acquiesced to his request, but used the carseats as my reason why we must take the bus (and not my car that was sitting right there). There’s no arguing when it comes to ditching the girl you potentially have a crush on:-) He decided that the bus would be just fine. And so we took the bus (which I conveniently had three passes for in my pocket). By the time we arrived there, he said, “You know, can you help me buy one of these bus passes, maybe for $20?” I said “Of course”, and now I just need to figure out how to teach him to read the maps! Praise the Lord for newfound courage and self-respect.
Of course that was the silver lining. The immunizations went just fine for him, but not so well for her. You see, she received a little piece of mail that she couldn’t really understand (heck, I have a degree I barely can read this stuff), and with her job (same plant, same shift) and three kids, she didn’t get around to giving it to her caseworker until after it was due (which, if it’s from the government, is usually less than one week). It was her Foodstamp and Medicaid renewal form. So while we are helping her to re-apply, she must now go through the entire application process (appointments and all) again rather than simply sending in a few photocopies of bills to update her record. More unfortunately for her, while we wait for those government applications to finish processing (many weeks), she will continue to get messages like she did today, “I’m sorry but only you (head of household gets lapse coverage) show as having coverage, none of your children have active accounts. You will not be able to get their shots.” The same scenario will play out when she goes to buy groceries; though with a job, it will not be as unbearable, because she’ll still have a few dollars to spend on food after she pays her rent and utilities.
As I saw it, it was not so much that the system was broken today. You see, she spent three hours taking the bus to the health department because she didn’t really believe that the clinic could possibly know her coverage had lapsed. In Africa, things just weren’t that connected. That is just acculturation.
No the brokenness happened before the notice arrived in my opinion. You see, as far as she could tell, it was just a piece of junk mail in an ocean of no money down auto deals, cash extensions, and free credit card offers with those little checks to tear off and deposit for free into your checking account (thank God most refugees don’t get an account right away so they don’t fall for that one!). If she had to send that junk mail back in, why is she so strongly encouraged by her caseworkers and more acculturated friends not to send all the rest in?
And there, I say, is where the real injustice lies. When businesses choose (notice I don’t say ‘when the government allows’) to prey on those who can’t read the fine print because they know the person can still sign on the X when the salesman sees a living lollipop walk in the door, there you find the injustice that is predatory lending and deceptive advertising. Of course, defining that is like defining pornography. As Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said of “obscenity” with his trademark candor, “I know it when I see it.” And he’s unequivocally right. Perhaps their wouldn’t be a mortgage crisis, and even I daresay a recession on the horizon, if a few more lenders would say “No” to someone who was in no judicious place to enter into so much debt.
And perhaps that is where the solution lies: when we in our everyday lives and those in positions of decision truly exercise their judgment and ethics rather than “give-in” to what helps the bottom line because they can’t quite pin down why something is NOT right.
Still learning how the world works,
Brian
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