…..to the US! The word has filtered back about the economic situation in the US at a time when life in Iraq is settling down to normal and these Iraqis interviewed by the Los Angeles Times have decided why risk it, why go to America now.
Reporting from Baghdad — Raheem’s cellphone rang as we walked through a crowded market, stepping over piles of trash and weaving around slow-moving donkey carts.
He spoke to the caller in his usual low murmur, then hung up. It was a U.S. immigration official, he told me. His application for refugee status in America had been approved. The flight was nine days away. “What do you think?” he asked, as calmly as if inviting my opinion on a new shirt.
Raheem, who speaks English with poetic fluency and carries himself with the dignity of an Ivy League lecturer, already knew he would not go.
In Iraq, he owns property and has a job, and his son has a promising career in computer technology. Bombs, of course, still go off and gunfire still crackles in the streets. Neighborhood gossip is of sectarian killings and kidnappings. But the epidemic of bloodshed seems a thing of the past.
The local news, meanwhile, reports on America’s economic woes, of foreclosed homes being auctioned off for a pittance. Word filters back from Iraqis in the U.S. who are unable to find work, struggling to afford medical care, and devouring savings that once seemed everlasting.
“It used to be that going to America was a dream. No more,” said Raheem, 56, a former teacher and experienced reporter who is one of the local cast of journalists, interpreters, drivers, guards, technicians and general fix-it men and women who have kept The Times running here since the war began.
If these don’t sound like refugees to you, they aren’t, but they are eligible to enter the US as refugees thanks to the bill Senator (send them to Hyannisport) Kennedy snuck into a defense appropriation bill in late 2007.
Raheem and I have had countless conversations on this topic since last summer, after the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act made it possible for Iraqis who worked for U.S.-based media, aid agencies and the U.S. government and its contractors to receive special consideration as refugees.
Read the whole article about other Iraqis who have made the same decision as Raheem. In fact, it sounds like things are better in Iraq then they are for the unemployed and unhappy refugees we have plunked down in 17 US states.
Even with unemployment in Iraq officially at 18% — far higher than in America — Iraqis are eligible for monthly food rations no matter what their income. In a society where bank loans and credit cards are virtually unheard of, most people own their homes outright. And many Iraqis are flush with cash after years of having little to spend money on.
As Iraqis’ earnings grew, the violence around them continued a steady drip downward.
Looks like all you resettlement folks can now focus on taking care of the truly persecuted Christian Iraqi refugees.
For everything you need to know about Iraqi refugees, see our previous 335 posts on the topic here.