The Christian Science Monitor this week also wrote about the International Rescue Committee’s report that I said was a ploy to get more taxpayer money into the resettlement agencies here. But, it wasn’t your usual politically correct version of the story—the reporter quotes us! I’ll let you go and see for yourselves what he says.
How about this idea—a return airfare fund!
What I really wanted to mention is that the Christian Science Monitor reporter quotes one more family that is longing to return to Iraq. How about a fund paid by the Top Ten (Volag) Government Contractors out of their own money, or money from the Tides Foundation for airfare and a little start-up money to return unhappy Iraqis to the life and culture they are comfortable with in the Middle East?
Yasmin and Othman left Iraq last fall to start a new life in Lynn, Mass. Like many refugees, they had imagined a new life – a good one – for themselves and their four children. But now they live on state assistance and food stamps.
The family’s small, three-bedroom apartment is dingy, despite their attempts to scrub it. On a bookshelf, photographs of the family in their garden in Iraq remind them of better days.
Othman was twice offered a job as a packer at a bread company, IRC officials say, but he rejected it because he wanted to work as a welder. Othman insists that the packer job wouldn’t pay enough to support his family, and he wants to work in his field.
“We came here because we had no safety or security because of the US war in Iraq,” Yasmin says. “But we didn’t think people were allowed to live like this in America…. If we could go back to Iraq, we would.”
Readers should see these unhappy Iraqis as an indictment of the kind of care they are receiving from wealthy agencies like the IRC.