I came across this lengthy and very informative article days ago, but only now am finding time to post it. From The National in Abu Dhabi, it was published last week. It begins with the tale of an Iraqi middle-aged woman granted refugee status by the UN and assigned to go to the US. She never showed up for her flight.
When the 4am flight to Budapest left Damascus on April 8, a seat on board was reserved for a 50-year-old Iraqi widow, one from hundreds of thousands of waiting refugees given the chance for a new life in the United States.
Salwar Alwan was to land in Hungary, sit out a few hours at the airport and then make the early afternoon Delta Air Lines flight to New York, arriving in her new country just before 5pm. From there, she would go down to Arizona, where a house was waiting for her new beginning.
She had spent weeks preparing for the trip; her bags were packed, her paperwork was in order. She had put aside enough money for the taxi to the airport. But at 1.30am that Wednesday she had not left the house. An hour and a half later there was a phone call from the refugee workers handling her case, telling her to come quickly, explaining that she could not afford to miss the flight. She did not move.
“Right up until the last minute I was planning to go to,” she said. “They called at 3am and told me to hurry, they told me to hurry, that I must hurry. I told them no, I wouldn’t go. I made the decision.”
When Ms Alwan fled Iraq in 2003, just after her husband was kidnapped – she saw him for the last time, she said, blindfolded, handcuffed and led away by masked gunmen – it was her first trip outside the country. She had lived her entire life in Nasariyah, in southern Iraq, and had never learnt to read or write. She knew little of the outside world.
The day before her flight to the United States Ms Alwan talked to some other Iraqi refugees, better educated than she, and what they had said terrified her.
One thing that scared her—black people in America! But, that (racist Iraqis) can’t be because we know minorities aren’t racist toward other minorities. It’s only majority populations of white people that are racists, or at least that is the mantra.
“They told me that if I went to America there would be black people in Arizona and they’d kidnap me or kill me or rape me. They said there would be medical students who would trick me and give me money and then use me for experiments. They said I’d be taken to the zoo and fed to the animals.
According to a refugee resettlement agency employee in Rhode Island, unrealistic expectations abound.
Few Iraqis waiting for resettlement – the golden ticket out of misery they all dream of – have a real idea of what waits for them if they are lucky enough to be taken in by the United States, Europe or Australia. The majority fall into one of two groups: those who think all of their problems will immediately evaporate or, increasingly, those who fear they will not cope with the hard-edged cut and thrust of life in modern, recession-hit America if they are sent there.
“I don’t know what the refugees are told in Syria, but they are always confused when they get here,” said Bahar Sadr, the programme manager at the International Institute of Rhode Island, a refugee transition centre in Providence, Rhode Island, on the east coast.
“They generally think they’ll be handed a large sum of money when they land, whereas in fact they arrive immediately in debt because they have to pay back the airfare for their flight here.
A couple of Iraqis resettled in Rhode Island couldn’t take being at the bottom rungs of society here, so they went back to the “dangerous” Middle East. I think we need to start keeping track of how many Iraqis go back (probably without even paying back their airfare which must really tick off the refugee agencies that get a kickback from taxpayer funded airfares).
Word is spreading and Iraqis are praying for an assignment to Europe, where the welfare is better.
Word of the unexpectedly difficult lives newly arrived Iraqis find in the United States has started to spread back to the refugee population of more than one million in Syria, Jordan and Turkey. Families and friends remain in close touch and there is a growing consensus among the waiting refugee population – pray that you get resettlement in Europe, where state assistance is more generous.
“I don’t know about Europe, but America is all about competition. If you don’t compete, you get trampled on,” Mr Sadr said.
Well, Mr. Sadr, the way things are going with the Obama Administration it won’t be long now before that hallmark of American greatness—competition—will be annihilated. People will be able to sit around, doing nothing, and collect big fat welfare payments extracted from the evil rich—right? Well, at least until the geese laying the golden eggs are dead.
Just please send us to Europe where we hear we will be cared for from cradle to grave.
“We want to go to Europe, not America,” said Abdul Salam Shakir, a father of three sons, the youngest two of whom, 15-year-old Harath and seven-year old Mohammad, have Down syndrome and require constant care. The family fled Iraq in the winter of 2006, when the sectarian war was at its peak. They now live on the outskirts of Damascus, surviving on UN handouts, money sent from siblings overseas and the rent from their house* in Baghdad.
America won’t give them lifelong care for their children!
“The Americans won’t give us treatment for the children,” Mr Shakir, 51, said. “Other refugees who went told me they don’t have the treatment, the Americans don’t look after the children. We don’t have a choice, but I hear that in Europe the treatment is better, the situation in Europe is better. They support you there and they support people with disabilities.”
Since we are such a downright mean country (where have I heard that before?), let’s hope they all go to Europe then!
* Note these people own a house! They are not destitute camp dwellers.
Additional thoughts a few minutes later: Maybe each prospective refugee coming to the US should sign an agreement of sorts saying he/she knows that life is hard and competitive in the US, that they will have to make it basically on their own after a brief resettlement period. They would agree to come only if they confirm they are the kind of person who can start at the bottom of society and work their way up and that they will respect our system of laws while they are doing it.
I once gave a speech at Valley Forge Military Academy and the thrust of it was—the students (cadets) are completely responsible for what they make of themselves. If they screw up it is on them (not their parents, the school, or their life circumstances) and if they succeed it is all because they have chosen to. That to me is what America offers.