APPENDIX I: SAMPLE SUMMARY AND ADVOCACY LETTER
SAMPLE ONE-PAGE SUMMARY OF REFUGEE HOT SPOT
All information is courtesy of www.refugeesinternational.org, and is current as of January, 2004.
Sri Lankan Refugees in India
Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka began fleeing to India in 1983 when violence broke out in their country between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil militant group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Although many of the refugees have been repatriated to Sri Lanka over the years, at present 61,000 Sri Lankan Tamils are living in 103 government-run camps in the South Indian state of Tamilnadu. An additional 20,000 refugees live outside the camps. The camp-based refugees said that they are grateful to the Indian government for permitting them to stay in India and making educational and health facilities available to their children.
Life in the camps, however, has been far from easy. They receive a small stipend each month and a few basic supplies from the Indian government, which are inadequate for survival. The refugees do whatever jobs they can find, such as construction work or house painting. In one camp more than 1,000 people have been living for a decade in crowded warehouses where each family lives in a 10 feet by 10 feet partitioned area. In other camps, refugees are living in “temporary” shelters, which were built prior to the refugee influx as short-term housing and are now falling apart. Toilet and water pump facilities, constructed by Indian authorities in the early 1990s, broke down long ago and have not been repaired. Refugees’ movement outside the camps is restricted and the camps have morning and evening curfews. The Indian Government does not permit international NGOs and aid agencies, including UNHCR, access to the camps. Refugees who disobey the rules may have their monthly stipend and rations cut off as punishment.
The Government of India has been asked to permit the UNHCR and other international aid agencies access to the camps to assist the refugees, and to ease its restrictions on the movement of Sri Lankan refugees living in the camps.
SAMPLE LETTER TO CONGRESS
Action alerts and sample letters such as this are available on the website of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (www.rac.org ). The Chai Impact Legislative Action Center provides easy links to send such letters to your representatives by email.
Dear Representative ______________________:
As a Reform Jew deeply committed to economic justice, I am writing to urge you to oppose the House budget resolution when it is voted on later this week and to vote no on any budget enforcement package that contains one-sided “pay-as-you-go” rules that do not require Congress to pay for tax cuts.
The House budget resolution proposes massive tax cuts while cutting domestic programs that middle and low income Americans rely on. The large tax cuts—which would total $138 billion in revenue in the next five years – pose a grave danger to the economy in the long run, threatening the viability of a range of social service programs. I fear that our children and our children’s children will pay the future price for these tax cuts.
The tax cuts in the budget primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. Assuming that no tax cuts are allowed to expire, more than one-third of the 2001 – 2003 tax cuts go to the top one percent of taxpayers, the vast majority of whom are millionaires. The share going to people at the bottom one-fifth of the income ladder is a fraction of one percent. Meanwhile, the budget would cut funding for domestic discretionary programs by $120 billion over five years. These include cuts to programs important to low and moderate income people including law enforcement, medical and scientific research, veterans’ medical care, housing and environmental protection. The budget resolution would likely lead to $2.2 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next five years, swelling the already large number of uninsured Americans. It will also slash humanitarian assistance to countries around the world.
It is unfair that the budget makes no room for more child care dollars, even though thousands of families are on waiting lists for child care help and fewer than one in seven children eligible for federal assistance gets help. The resolution would cut childcare assistance for at least 200,000 children. Additionally, the resolution’s steep cuts in funding for the Section 8 housing voucher program would lead to 250,000 fewer low-income families and elderly and disabled households receiving housing assistance in FY2005.
From the Torah’s commandment that we shall “open our hands to the poor and needy among us,” (Deuteronomy 15:7) Judaism has developed a rich tradition of communal social services. The United States’ community is in need, and the federal government has the responsibility to open its hands to the needy among us. We are particularly mindful of the needs of those struggling in poverty at this season of Passover, when we utter the words “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” While we open our homes to those in need, we hope these values will permeate the halls of Congress as well. Therefore I urge you to vote no on the House budget resolution and on H.R. 3973, the accompanying budget process bill.
Sincerely,
Your name
