Just now someone sent me a press release dated today from the IOM (sorry I can’t find the link for it) but it begins:
IRAQ – US$ 10 Million to Help Returning Families Reintegrate – IOM has received US$10 million from the US Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) to meet the most urgent needs of Iraqi returnees.
Working a with the Ministry of Displacement and Migration (MoDM) and host communities, IOM is assisting returnees and local residents without jobs or underemployed by providing information and counseling; grants for the purchase of tools, equipment or base materials; and vocational and/or business training, to create or expand small businesses or to find employment.
[…..]
IOM monitors have identified some 52,000 post-2006 returnee families in approximately 800 locations; with the majority returning to Baghdad, and significant groups to Diyala and Anbar.
Seventy-one per cent of returnees interviewed by IOM said they had decided to return to their places of origin because of improved security or a combination of improved security and difficult conditions in the place of displacement.
Sounds like it could save the US taxpayers more money and be less of a headache then hauling tens of thousands of Iraqis to the US only to have them complain about no jobs and poor living conditions.
For information on IOM in Iraq go here.