Category: Iraqi refugees

Obama and refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Where does Obama stand on the question of refugees?   After a little searching around, I don’t have a definitive answer for you.   What got me thinking about this today (admittedly I should have already been looking into it) was a post at Gates of Vienna yesterday about Danes being inflamed by a 2007 report that Obama was going to insist that European allies in the Iraq War should step up to the plate and take more Iraqi refugees.   Denmark already has some experience with Iraqi refugees who were interpretors and turned out to be spys (here).

See the post about a Danish hubbub at GOV here first, then continue below:

The Europeans are already stressed by excessive Muslim immigration and don’t need Obama lecturing them about their supposed duty to bring more.

I am guessing that BHO will be in favor of increased refugee resettlement because it fits his Leftist (we love all of humanity) view of the world as we have been discussing in the category “community destablization.”  Professionals in the State Department are probably pretty excited about increased numbers and the Leftwing volags who hold all the government contracts are likely jumping for joy since they are paid by the head for each refugee resettled.

Only time will tell how the new Administration will tackle the issue at a time when unemployment is on the rise here and any sane person would see that bringing more people seeking employment to our country will only continue to sink the ship.   Already we have complaints across the country of refugees not finding work.

The Iraqi refugees now arriving by the thousands to America are complaining that they can’t find work.  Generally the Iraqis are more highly educated and skilled, unlike the Somalis who can be shipped off to the meatpacking plants.  The Iraqis want meaningful work and aren’t getting it.  See our recent post here and follow links to other unhappy Iraqi refugee stories.

One hint of how Obama feels about the subject is that he supported legislation passed into law last year to increase the number of Iraqi refugees to the US over what the Bush Administration was already doing.  See mention of that here.   That bill was pushed by Mr. Refugee himself, Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy is the chief sponsor of the Refugee Act of 1980 along with guess who, Senator Joe Biden—a law that set in motion the multimillion dollar government contract program to non-profit groups.

Although it would be nice to think that somehow we, at RRW, played some role (as suggested at GOV) in the slow trickle of Iraqi refugees to the US, all we have really been able to do is chronicle the situation (256 posts to date) from a distance.  There are all sorts of reasons given why the US was slow to start bringing Iraqis to America, I think a primary one was a rigorous screening process (365 “refugee” terrorists screened as of July) at Homeland Security.  I think the security people put brakes on the State Department for a long time.   But, all that is behind us now and the floodgates are open to Iraqi refugees.

Other than the truly persecuted Christians, we have been maintaining (in agreement with the Iraqi government) that Iraq needs its well-educated people to rebuild Iraq not cleaning motels in Baltimore.

I found a couple of things that might give us a slight hint at where things will be going with refugees in The One’s administration.

From the Obama/Biden website:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis—more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama and Biden will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary.

At least there is no mention of an airlift to your town!   But the last line in this issue statement was interesting, although slightly off topic:

They will reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.

So, I guess if we leave Iraq and a bloodbath follows we are going back in?

An indication of where the Obama Administration might go on the subject of refugees comes from the lobbying arm of the Refugee industry, Refugees International (Chairman of the Board is Farooq Kathwari).  Note this message to Obama suggests a more subtle approach and doesn’t mention the word “resettlement.”

This is getting way too long, but I wanted to comment that at GOV Japan was mentioned.  Until now Japan has resisted taking refugees, but they were finally beaten down by the guilt-tripping “radicals who love all humanity” at the UN to begin bringing third worlders (Somalis!) to Japan.   See my post here in September.

I have no doubt that the pressure is on Japan to bring in Iraqis too.

One Iraqi family and loads of helpers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have time to write about it, but check out this story of an Iraqi family arriving in Wilton, CT where it looks like a ton of volunteers are helping them get settled.   Maybe there are problems, but it sure doesn’t look like it.     Then go back and read about the unhappy bunch of Iraqis in Baltimore, MD here.

We continue to maintain that refugee resettlement needs to be done one-on-one—one family and a sponsoring church or other group.   Looks like this family got one-on-ten or so!

Baltimore, MD: another bunch of unhappy Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Nov. 8th:  Oops!   I can’t believe I forgot to give you the link to this story.  Check out the story and comments here.

Here we go again.  Where is Matthew Lee?   Lee is the Associated Press reporter who has been an advocate for groups like the International Rescue Committee pushing for more Iraqi refugees that they can’t afford to take care of.  

I know there will be howls at what I’m going to say, but what the heck, here goes.  I know a little about animal rescue and there is a psyciatric condition known as ‘Animal Collection Syndrome.’   I’m wondering if there have been any studies on refugee collecting?  

The only other explanation for what I’m reporting here is that these volags like the money too much that they get from the federal tax payer, while the State Department is bringing in too many refugees.

The latest group of unhappy Iraqi refugees are in our home state, Maryland.  The International Rescue Committee dismisses them as having “unrealistic expections.”   Gee where have I heard that before (here, here, here, and here)?

This month 15 refugee families from Iraq, most with children, face the loss of their rental assistance. Without jobs, transportation or English-language skills, some fear they will be evicted and left homeless.

The families, which have been in Baltimore since August and September, say they were promised eight months of assistance, including food stamps, rent, and utilities, along with language and job-training and placement assistance. But in October they learned that their rental assistance would end after only two months, and some have outstanding utility bills of hundreds of dollars, according to Dr. Nasir Al Khalidi, an Iraqi-American who has been helping the refugees. “Some of them say return us to die in Iraq–it would be better to die in Iraq than die of starvation in America,” Al Khalidi says. “Can you believe that?”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a nonprofit U.S. State Department contractor that resettles refugees from around the world, says Iraqi refugees often have unrealistic expectations, but that things work out.

A VP for the IRC basically calls them ingrates:

The family says it has no money even for bus fare to reach English-language classes at Baltimore City Community College downtown. The man says he has been asked by the aid agency to repay airfare totaling $2,400 for the family [ The IRC gets a cut of the airfare they collect that you the taxpayer paid for]. He retrieves a bill from Baltimore Gas and Electric totaling $370.90, which arrived on Oct. 18, the same day the family received a $138 phone bill.

A woman who answered the telephone at the International Rescue Committee’s Baltimore office referred a reporter to Bellor, IRC’s resettlement vice president, who is based in New York City. While unfamiliar with the specifics of the Baltimore families, Bellor acknowledges that many Iraqi refugees feel swindled by the resettlement process.

“The story is the same as you’ll find in other places,” Bellor says. “What they expected and what they encountered were different.”

Bellor says Iraqis tend to be harder to please than, say, Burmese refugees, in part because many Iraqis had professional careers and middle-class lives before the war. “What often happens,” she says, is “a job is found for them. They’re like, ‘What? I have to go make beds in a hotel?’ Some of them refuse these jobs.”

Just send us more federal tax money and we can make it right!

Bellor says that IRC is doing what it can with the resources it has. “I think the U.S. refugee program could use a serious review,” she says. “The amount of money that’s available for refugees hasn’t kept pace with income and cost of living.”

Vice Presidents at the IRC make between $100,000 and $200,000 a year.  Maybe they could just cut a VP slot and help the refugees with the money they saved.

Remember that wise Iraqi boy in Tucson?

It is better to have 10 Iraqi refugees who are satisfied with their lives than having 100 angry ones with no life at all.

Iraqi Palestinians suffer on border, but no Arab country wants them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is yet another story about the Iraqi Palestinians living in camps along the border of Iraq and Syria.  And, again it’s a plea from these ‘friends of Saddam’ for resettlement to a third country.  I will bet you if you examined the United Nations site where this article is located you will not find any similar desparate plea from the UN to resettle the Iraqi Christians whose plight is much worse than these Palestinians.

AL TANF, Iraq-Syria Border, October 30 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has rushed assistance to hundreds of Palestinian refugees stuck in camps on the Iraq-Syria border after heavy rain and flooding caused chaos and misery.

Also, again the article is deceptive because it doesn’t tell you the reason these people are refugees.  They were favored by Saddam Hussein and those Muslims now in power don’t take too kindly to them. 

The flooding is just one more chapter in the ordeal suffered by the Palestinians in Al Tanf and Al Waleed since fleeing their homes in Baghdad to escape threats, kidnapping and violence. They have endured sandstorms, snow in the winter and soaring temperatures in the summer. In Al Tanf, two children have been killed by passing trucks and there have been a couple of major fires.

Some of the refugees have lived at Al Tanf for three years, barred from entering any of the countries neighbouring Iraq. “We cannot go forwards, nor back. We have a road on one side that threatens our children’s lives daily, a high wall on the other; in front and behind we have two impenetrable borders,” explained Abu Ziyad, a member of the Al Tanf refugee committee.

“Our only hope is resettlement. For the sake of our children, our wives, our elderly, we beg you, please get us out of here,” he pleaded.

UNHCR on Thursday reiterated its appeal to the international community to provide resettlement places for Palestinians from Iraq, with no other option currently available for the refugees. “We urge more countries to open their doors to resettle the Palestinian refugees and bring their precarious situation to an end,” said Daniel Endres, UNHCR’s representative in Iraq.

Where is the famous Muslim charity?   These people are Arabs.  Why isn’t the UN begging countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia to take them?    Hey, here is a thought, maybe if Obama becomes President, he and buddy PLO Khalidi could be sure they get resettled among their own folks in the Middle East.   But, don’t count on it, if Obama becomes President he will be welcoming them to a town where you live.

And, besides putting a guilt-trip on the world over Palestinians keeps the Israeli hate strategy going.   See my last ‘UN guilt-trips the world’ post here.  Search our site for “Iraqi Palestinians” for more information.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq blows up houses to keep refugees from returning

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A story in U.S. News and World Report by Alex Kingsbury tells about a tactic al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is using to discourage refugees from returning home. (The headline, but not the writer, refers to AQI as “insurgents,” a description I don’t like as it implies these terrorists are local people, which most of them are not.)

NAQUIB, Iraq—Flying several hundred feet over the Diyala River basin in eastern Iraq, it’s not difficult to see why one government leader here calls it a disaster area. Shattered remains of houses dot the landscape, both over the brown and dusty desert areas and the lush, green river basins that have earned this area the title “breadbasket of Iraq.”

The destroyed homes are the result of one of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s latest strategies—converting homes into bombs, or “house-borne improvised explosive devices,” as they’ve been dubbed. It’s a tactic particular to this province, which is a combustible mix of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish residents.

AQI has destroyed some 60 houses in the last year and they continue to do so. The central government representative in the province

explains that the families need to return soon to harvest the local date groves. IEDs buried in the groves have understandably kept many farmers out.

Like many areas of Iraq, this one has local reconciliation committees that have taken responsibility for their own security. They have developed a plan.

In response to the dozens of households moving back to the area, local Iraqi reconciliation committees have devised a new strategy. Iraqi and coalition teams will de-mine the areas where fighting has taken place so that residents can return. Then, some of the sons from returning families will be hired as security guards, with a guaranteed paycheck for several months. This has the dual impact of employing returning residents and making the area more difficult for AQI to re-establish itself.

“The area is in decay because of all the fighting and it clearly needs help. The issue is creating lasting solutions,” says Col. Burt Thompson, who commands the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, and the U.S. commander with responsibility for all of Diyala province. “What’s encouraging here is that Iraqis are moving to clear these areas of explosives left by AQI, and they are moving to find their own ways to get residents to return.”

Note that the Iraqis still need the coalition to help them. If we leave Iraq quickly, as Barack Obama intends, this area like many others will be left to the mercy of AQI, which is well funded from outside Iraq.

The article does not say whether the families returning are internally displaced or had gone to neighboring countries. I wish we knew that. Also, we don’t know how the returning families will be housed.