These unhappy jobless Iraqi refugees are in Atlanta. The International Rescue Committee whose annual budget is over $200 million (and almost half of that comes from the taxpayers) gave them a nice Thanksgiving dinner (big deal), when they want jobs! By the way, the dinner didn’t look as fancy as the one in the New York publicity stunt.
Or they are going back to Jordan! From CNN:
The man, Munir, and his wife, Fatima, hoped, like so many immigrants before them, that the United States would help them find a better life for them and their children.
But the couple, who asked that their identities be protected for fear of reprisals against their family and friends still in Iraq, are considering ending their American dream after three months of struggle.
College-educated and proficient in English, Fatima and Munir were shocked that the skills that provided them a comfortable living in Baghdad, as a mechanical engineer and lab technician, are of little advantage in an increasingly competitive U.S. job market.
They spend much of their day at the IRC office in Atlanta, searching for employment, but are considering returning to Jordan, where they say they can find work, albeit illegally.
“I am worried that I will be thrown out on the street,” Fatima says. “My Pakistani neighbors couldn’t find work and they were evicted and thrown out on the street. We are worried the same will happen to us. Many refugees we know have not found work and they have been here for eight months to a year.”
Until 2007, very few Iraqi refugees were resettled in the United States. For 2008, the Bush administration set a goal of accepting 13,000 Iraqis.
And now we have the ever-brilliant Refugees International urging its groupies to write to Obama and tell him we need 105,500 Iraqis this next year.
Didn’t anyone in the State Department think about this—highly educated Iraqis needing jobs in our miserable job market? Was there no planning? Did someone lie to these people? Where is that big investigative reporter at AP, Matthew Lee, the one beating up Bush for not bringing enough Iraqi refugees?
You are all nuts, that’s all I can say!
P.S. Mr. Lee, if you decide to take the initiative and do an investigation, I’ll direct you to our Iraqi refugee category where you will find many unhappy Iraqi refugee stories. But, I am guessing you will never do the story because it is outside your world view.
Lets see so far we have unhappy Iraqis in Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio and now Georgia.