New Mexico makes state number 11* in our countdown of states that have scarce employment for educated Iraqi refugees. And, just think we have brought about 13,000 displaced Iraqis to the US in the last year. Next year, if Refugees International gets its way with the Obama Administration, we could see over 100,000. They can’t all be employed with your tax dollars! From Albuquerque:
Last year Catholic Charities helped settle almost 100 Iraqi refugees here, and this year another hundred have come to New Mexico.
The State Department considers New Mexico a good settlement location for Iraqis because of its low cost of living and comparatively adequate social services.
New Mexico might be welcoming with lots of welfare, but apparently jobs are lacking.
Those lucky ones [Iraqis who got in to the US] though still have to find work.
“You had a position and status,” Nutkiewicz (director of the volag, Catholic Charities in NM) continued. “To be asked to flip hamburgers or to work in housekeeping is a very tough blow to the ego, and it’s certainly not fulfilling one’s potential.”
But he hired Saldaif as a caseworker. It’s his first full-time job in the United States, and while it’s not academics, it has the potential to be fulfilling.
How many Americans would also like to have fulfilling work these days?
I noticed in some of the other states where Iraqis are unemployed that the local volag had hired them, but how many caseworkers can a volag use? If you are new to RRW, you might not know that these non-profits like Catholic Charities get a large portion of their funding from state and federal taxpayers.
There was one little additional mention in the story that interested me. Saldaif talked about how he came to be in the US because his brother was kidnapped.
“We thought they killed him,” Saldaif (the Iraqi refugee star of this story) said. “They called us and they said go pick up his body from Mosul”
But a short time later coalition forces freed his brother. It was never determined whether an organized terror group or a gang of kids kidnapped his brother.
Am I reading this right? Is he saying that his brother might have been kidnapped by kids, but no matter, terrorists or kids, sounds like a great story to get us into the US?
* We have jobless Iraqis in Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire,Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Connecticut and now New Mexico.