Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqis jobless in Roanoke, VA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yet another unhappy Iraqi refugee story, this one from Roanoke, VA.  By the way, we have written about Roanoke before because it was the location of an American blacks conflict with Somali refugees.

Anyway, the primary subject of this article in the Roanoke Times, Haidar Khairallah, is not unhappy.  He is an injured interpreter who was resettled here after a long wait and appears to be on his way to fitting in to America.   Obviously, from the story he is a secular Muslim who spent some years as a child in England and speaks English well, and that helps. 

Now he uses his English by helping Roanoke’s Refugee and Immigrant Services (a Catholic resettlement agency) to calm down some unhappy Iraqis—professionals who want jobs other than cleaning.   Same old story just another state.

In the crowded conference room of Roanoke’s Refugee and Immigration Services, Haidar has been asked to broker a sit-down with his fellow refugees. Resettlement coordinator Jasminka Traylor has heard complaints about some of them turning down manual-labor jobs. She’s asked for help from Haidar, now working as a part-time translator for the office while he looks for full-time work.

Unlike most refugees who come to America from harsh refugee-camp conditions, these immigrants were professionals in Iraq — engineers, teachers and the like. They lived in metropolitan cities in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria while awaiting security clearance and refugee status.

The Iraqis will even take a job at non-Union-still-profiting Walmart if they can get out of cleaning!

Unlike Haidar, most of the new Iraqis in Roanoke aren’t yet fluent in English and don’t qualify for white-collar work here — which Traylor explains repeatedly in the meeting.

“We don’t want cleaning job,” one man gripes. “You can’t find job in Wal-Mart instead? How about another mart?”

Growing frustrated, Traylor asks: “Who cleans in Iraq?”

“People from Sudan.”

“No,” Haidar interjects. “Iraqi people clean in Iraq.”

Traylor asks the question again. The men and women whisper among themselves but say nothing.

She throws up her hands. “You have to find something to do here to pay your bills until you’re ready to find something you want to do!”

And, Refugees International is telling do-gooders to write to Obama and push for over 100,000 more Iraqis in this fiscal year?  It’s nuts!

Start at this post to find more unhappy Iraqi refugee stories, or just go to our Iraqi Refugee category.

Germany to take 2,500 Iraqi Christians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A while back Germany was talking about taking in 30,000 Iraqi Iraqi refugees. Now Deutsche-Welle reports on plans to accept up to 2,500 of them “in the framework of a European Union agreement.”

We posted several times on Germany’s plans, beginning last March. The churches began by pushing for 30,000. Naturally, some people thought it was unfair to specify Christians. We thought it was sensible, since that’s who is the most persecuted, Germany is (or was) a Christian country, and why shouldn’t churches ask for Christians? Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to approve.

Then Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki visited Merkel and told her he wants the refugees back in Iraq. We’re all for resettling the refugees back home. But Maliki has not been straightforward about the Christians, or he has been living in a fantasy. The Christian communities are being utterly destroyed, unless something has happened since I last read about the situation. But Merkel seemed to be rethinking taking a lot of refugees.

Also, the UN is involved.

[The plan for 2,500 refugees] comes on the same day as the UN’s Special Commissioner for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, expressed his concern about the situation of Iraqi Christians in Iraq in talks with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. De Mistura said a further exodus had to be stopped and called upon Germany and other EU countries to urge Baghdad to give more protection to the minority grouping.

Urge, shmurge. Baghdad hasn’t done anything for the Christians and doesn’t know what to do. Unless they get their own militias and training, they’ll all be killed off or driven out. Urging Baghdad to do something is about as effective as urging Ahmadinejad to give up his nukes. (I’d love to be proven wrong.)

The article is interesting for something else — how differently Germany treats refugees from the way we treat them. First of all, they have to get acculturated.

Hessen’s Interior Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) stressed that the process foresaw long-term resettlement of the refugees and that they would be expected to take part in a three-month integration course, which would also involve language teaching.

Then, unlike refugees here, who are permanent residents once they arrive,

Berlin’s Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting (SPD) said the refugees would initially be given three-year residence permits. These could be renewed and lead eventually to German citizenship. 

Why don’t we do that? Kind of probationary residence. If they don’t behave and start to become Americans, out they go. Think of the trouble that would prevent.

At the end of the article is something that’s new to me. (I admit I haven’t been following the Iraqi refugee issue as closely as I should have.) The last I heard the UN was talking as if millions of Iraqi refugees needed resettlement. Now:

Stefan Teloeken, a spokesman for UNHCR Germany, said a small fraction of the two million refugees sheltering in countries neighboring Iraq were neither able to return home nor to integrate into their host countries.

“For these people we have to find third countries,” he said on Thursday. “There is a program set up to this end and we hope that many countries will join this program.

I guess I missed the part where the UN realized Iraq really is being pacified and most of the refugees will be able to go home. Well, hallelujah.

Refugees International: Tell Obama to resettle 105,500 Iraqis into US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ken Bacon*, head of a major refugee industry lobbying group, Refugees International (RI), urged his supporters to send letters to President-elect Obama and tell him to increase the number of Iraqi refugees entering the US to 105,500 (and they aren’t promoting the truly persecuted Christians), while the Bush Administration has proposed 17,000.    Our worldwide ceiling for FY2009 is 80,000.

From a Refugees International action alert this past week:

Increase the number of Iraqis resettled into the U.S. to 105,500.

The number just keeps growing!  Everytime they put out a release the number goes up by 10,000 or so.   Here is a post back in September where groups including RI were talking 80,000-90,000, and were very displeased with the State Department’s measly 17,000.

We brought around 13,000 in FY 2008 and a large number of these refugees are very unhappy as we have reported many times recently.   Well educated and expecting work according to their educations, Iraqis entering the US in large numbers over the last few months have not been silent about their disappointment.  See one of many posts on the unhappy Iraqis here.

Are these groups like RI completely isolated  and out of touch that they don’t know this dissatisfaction is going on in city after city in the US?  How can they continue to advocate for more Iraqis when the ones we have are not being cared for?  It makes no sense!  

And, won’t these 105,500 competent Iraqis be competing for increasingly scarce jobs if the economy continues to tighten as predicted?   How is that going to sit with out-of-work Americans, after so many fellow Americans fought and died for Iraq to have its freedom? 

 

*Ken Bacon, if you recall, was the Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton Administration whose claim to fame was that he released Linda Tripp’s personel file which served to draw the media to Linda Tripp and away from Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.   Bet you a buck, he ends up in the State Department if Hillary is Secretary of State, afterall, in the ways of Washington—she owes him.

Refugees International is chaired by Farooq Kathwari.  You can read more about him here.

IRC hosts publicity stunt Thanksgiving dinner for refugees in NYC, elsewhere

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Nothing much here to report other than the International Rescue Committee(IRC), which claims its funding is not adequate, put on what appears to be a pretty lavish Thanksgiving spread in New York City this week—obviously a publicity stunt because here is the article in USA Today :

NEW YORK — Mohamed Hashem*, a college student who studied dance as a child and worked as a model, was threatened often on the streets of Baghdad. He ran to Jordan, languished in Lebanon and hid for two years in Syria before finally making it to New York in July as a refugee.

Having fled persecution, he is a pilgrim, too. On Thursday he celebrated his first Thanksgiving.

“What keeps me going is I always remember where I was and where I am now,” says Hashem, 25, who shares a room with another Iraqi refugee in Brooklyn. “I have no job. I am lonely, but I’m in New York where I always wanted to be. I’m safe.”

Hashem and dozens of other refugees gathered Thursday night for an early celebration of the holiday that commemorates the feast shared by America’s indigenous people and refugees of a different sort centuries ago. Like Hashem, many were celebrating Thanksgiving for the first time.

The dinner was one of three organized this week by the International Rescue Committee, one of nine agencies that resettle refugees throughout the USA. Celebrations also were held in Phoenix on Thursday and Salt Lake City on Tuesday.

A ho-hum article is livened up by a comment from Chris Coen, Friends of Refugees.  Mr. Coen is the ever-present reminder that these Volags (supposedly voluntary agencies) funded with your tax dollars often times leave the refugees in their care uncared-for! 

Government inspection reports of IRC are not quite as rosy as this article. When the US State Department visited IRC refugees at their homes in New York City they found a refugee family that had not been provided with the minimal ‘minimum required’ used furnishings that are required by IRC’s government contracts. The refugee family told the government inspectors that they had asked IRC to provide an additional bed a month earlier, yet the IRC never brought it. The family also was not receiving food stamps or welfare even though they qualified for both programs. Another home visit revealed a family of five that had been placed into a crowded one-bedroom apartment. The family said that they felt unsafe in the neighborhood that IRC had placed them as they had been robbed, and a homicide had occurred in front of the building next door. This family also was not receiving food stamps even though they qualified for the program.

Christopher Coen
Friends of Refugees
FORefugees@hotmail.com

See the handy graph with the article that reminds us that we are expected to resettle 80,000 more refugees into a beleagured job market in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. 

*We wrote about Hashim previously here.   He gets around doesn’t he?  Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN was even at this dinner.   For the diversity worshipers reading this, take note that gays are persecuted (and at times executed) in Middle Eastern countries that follow strict Islamic law.

And, check out the photo (by a USA Today  photographer so we know this was a publicity stunt set up in advance) of Hashim.  Are those adult beverages the refugees are enjoying?  Cash bar?  Or, were drinks on the IRC (the taxpayer) too?

IRC top brass make huge salaries, here.

Baltimore Iraqi Refugees, a correction and an update

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We posted on the unhappy Iraqi refugees in Baltimore on Nov. 5th.  Now, comes a new article with a correction.  It wasn’t the International Rescue Committee that dropped the ball with this group of Iraqi professionals, but Lutheran Social Services.

The family is a client of Lutheran Social Services (LSS), not the International Rescue Committee (IRC) as was originally reported in the story.

However, go back to my original post and note it was an IRC representative who said the Iraqis had “unrealistic expectations.”   I still want to know who gave them those expectations?

I can only surmise that the IRC wanted a correction to the original story so they aren’t linked with this particular unhappy Iraqi.  It was all the fault of LSS.  So how is it that they dropped the ball?

A local “restructuring” of a refugee-resettlement contractor, plus a seasonal influx of refugees, may have contributed to the troubles Iraqi refugees have recently complained about in Baltimore. Their case managers have also faced longer processes for getting them things such as food stamps and I.D. cards, aid workers say.

A “restructuring” eh?   They must have been suspended for past shoddy work.

Susan Gundlach, director for community integration for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, says a “monitoring” of its Baltimore office found problems with the way services were being delivered. “There wasn’t anything glaring,” Gundlach says, but the findings led to a “restriction” on refugee resettlement beginning Aug. 1.

August first,  what a coincidence, I’m wondering if the Lutheran Immigration folks were suspended in August because of this story featured in the Baltimore Sun about a disabled Iraqi refugee not being properly cared for by LSS.   

Reforms needed:

I’m starting to see a pattern.  Refugee contractor makes news that is not the usual happy puff piece, and wham, suspended till they get themselves straightened out.    Don’t you think the State Department could figure out a more efficient system to monitor its 10 big contractors and their nearly 400 subcontractors before the refugees end up in the newspaper.  Or better still, stop contracting unaccountable non-profits in the first place.   Maybe the whole program should be run by a refugee office in each state?

Endnote:  LSS is messing up with its Iraqi refugees in New Hampshire too.