Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqis going to Chattanooga, TN

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

To Chattanooga and dozens of cities across America….    There are so many articles in so many cities, that we won’t be able to tell you about them all.    This is the last month of FY 08 and the State Department is bringing them in by the planeload to attempt to reach their magic refugee goals for the year.  So, we will just mention those, like this one,  that have some interesting bit of information to share. 

As early as October, Chattanooga may be the new home to more than a dozen Iraqi refugees being resettled in the United States.

“We are looking forward to working with them,” said Marina Peshterianu, office coordinator for Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services in Chattanooga.

What attracted my attention here is the mention of Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services.    In the first month of writing this blog I wrote a post (Strange Bedfellows) about a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2003 to stop the FBI, under the Patriot Act, from interviewing Iraqi refugees that this volag had resettled.   

The most interesting aspect of the ACLU lawsuit is that it also included the following participants:

  In addition to Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services, the groups participating in the lawsuit are Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, which operates a mosque and school in Ann Arbor, Michigan; American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a national civil rights organization based in Washington D.C.; Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, a human services organization based in Dearborn, Michigan that operates a medical clinic as well as a center for refugees and torture victims; Council on American-Islamic Relations, a grassroots membership organization based in Washington D.C.; and The Islamic Center of Portland, Masjed As-Saber, which operates a mosque and school in Portland, Oregon.

Additionally, The Chattanooga Times Free Press story has an error I want to correct.  They say:

So far in fiscal year 2008, which ends on Sept. 30, the United States has admitted close to 2,000 Iraqis, giving priority to those affiliated with the U.S. government and religious minorities, the Department of Homeland Security Web site states. Earlier this year, the U.S. government established a goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqi refugees for fiscal year 2008.

It is close to 12,000, not 2000.    As of the end of August we brought 10,998 Iraqis to the US this fiscal year.  In August alone we brought 2183.   The way things are going this month the State Department will reach the 12,000 Iraqi refugee goal.   Also, Senators Kennedy and Biden were successful in attaching a bill that would allow another 5000 special visas for Iraqis to a funding measure that President Bush signed into law.  I don’t know how many of those special visas have been processed.

365 Iraqis with possible ties to terrorism have been rejected so far.  See earlier post here.

We have written 226 posts on Iraqi refugees.  See our special category here.

IRC pushing Biden for hearings on Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of the top ten volags resettling refugees in the US.  They have a vested interest in bringing more refugees to America (federal funding is allocated by the head) and are now rounding up their friends and urging Senator Biden to hold hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Iraqi “humanitarian crisis.”   Here is what they told their good friend Senator Biden:

Specifically, we strongly believe the United States government must develop and implement a wide-ranging response strategy that looks at the Iraqi humanitarian crisis, particularly the displacement, in a holistic way and allows for a sustained response over an extended period of time. In that regard, we would respectfully request that the Committee on Foreign Relations hold a hearing during the remaining time of the 110th session of Congress to assess the continuing needs of vulnerable Iraqis and to investigate alternatives for a comprehensive response.

Visit the letter from the IRC to Biden and see the groups and churches behind this effort.  Keep in mind that these churches get federal funding for their refugee work.

As one of the chief advocates for bringing more refugees to the US and paying church groups and other non-profits with your tax dollars, Biden is already on board, he won’t require much urging.   Having such hearings is also a handy way of reminding voters that the Bush Administration screwed up in Iraq.

You can learn more about the IRC here.

The latest information on Iraqi refugees arriving in the US is here.

Where are Iraqi refugee numbers for August?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 6th:   A reader has kindly sent us the number of Iraqis resettled in August.  We resettled 2183 in August and July was 2352.  So it appears the US State Department jumped when the NGO’s and the Associated Press demanded more and gave them what they demanded—this brings the number for the fiscal year close to the magic 12,000.   But, they will surely not be satisfied, more demands will come.  We are at 10,998 at the end of August with a few weeks to go in the fiscal year.

 

Where is AP reporter Matthew Lee?   Over the last year Lee, like clockwork, bashed the Bush Administration about how few Iraqi refugees we brought to the US in the previous month.  Here is a post about Lee in June in which I discussed the Associated Press spin on the subject.   For more, just put his name in our search function.

Has anyone seen the numbers for August?  I can only conclude they are way up because so far I haven’t seen a story.   

Oh, I just remembered, the mainstream media is too busy (in a frenzy actually) these days digging dirt on 17 year olds.

Iraqis in America weigh in on McCain v. Obama

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Something called Inter Press Service News Agency published an article late last week about the views of Iraqi refugees and immigrants on the Presidential campaign and asked which of the candidates would be better for Iraq.  The article is a bit confusing because first they cite polls in Iraq where Iraqis by very large margins supposedly want America out, but then Iraqis interviewed here seem to be mostly for McCain, at least on issues relating to their homeland.

“I am so sad to say it, but I think that McCain would be better for the future of Iraq, especially since my family and friends are still living there,” Bassam Sebti, a 28-year-old Iraqi who has lived in the United States for two years, told IPS.

“I’m a taxpayer now. Obama is better for the U.S., but not for Iraq,” said Sebti, who is an editor at the International Centre for Journalists and lives in Washington. 

Naseer Nori, 51, came with his family to the U.S. in May under the Iraqi refugee resettlement programme. “Iraqis back home prefer McCain — they do not want an early withdrawal, which will only leave the country in the hands of militias and political parties that will fight with each other,” he told IPS. “We do not have a strong military to stop that.”

Then here is another Iraqi interviewed who sees it completely differently, but keep in mind that Saddam was a Sunni and this fellow was a part of the favored sect in Iraq prior to our arrival:

Other Iraqis here believe that Obama would be better on U.S. domestic policy, especially treatment of immigrants and refugees, and have no confidence in McCain’s policies toward their homeland.

Suhail Ahmed, a 55-year-old Sunni translator, also moved here with his family in May. Asked to assess the candidates, he responded wryly: “A milkmaid will never tell you that her yogurt is sour.”

Ahmed noted that the Republicans have never admitted that they made mistakes in Iraq. “People back home are tired, and the Republicans will follow the same footsteps of Bush — nothing good will happen to Iraq if McCain wins,” he said.

Bottomline, there is no consensus.  But, this article does give us some useful statistics:

At the time of the 2000 census, about 89,000 Iraqis lived in the Unites States. That number represented only 0.3 percent of all foreign-born people living here. According to Refugee International, 13,754 Iraqi refugees have come to the U.S. from 2001 to 2008.

Drug-dealing Iraqi refugee’s body found in S. Carolina

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to an informant’s tip, the body of an Iraqi refugee who was murdered in South Carolina eight years ago has been recovered.   Police have made arrests and are now trying to piece together his life.

The man whose skeleton was recovered recently from a car in a McClellanville creek had arrived in the United States as a refugee from Iraq in the early 1990s.

Investigators think that once here, Ala Hassan Sarhan became involved in a world of cocaine dealing that led to his demise eight years ago.

Though the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office has made arrests in the case, much of the homicide victim’s past remains a mystery. Authorities have not been able to track down Sarhan’s relatives. Questions also linger about how he arrived in America after the first Gulf War and why he later moved to the Lowcountry.

Read about how he ran afoul of those he was selling drugs to here.   Police know that Sarhan had a prior arrest for assault and lived in a campground, but they want to know who brought him to the US and federal immigration officials are not saying.

In 1999, North Charleston police arrested Sarhan on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill that stemmed from a fight at the same bar where he supposedly met Herrmann and Cumbee.

The local police want answers from the Feds and aren’t getting any.   No volag is stepping up to tell them the man’s background and how he was resettled and by which agency.

“He came to this country as a political refugee,” Watson, one of the sheriff’s investigators on the case, said. “As for the reasons why he came here, we don’t have that information at all. Based on what we gathered, he had some dealings with the Iraqi military … He was injured by a land mine. He does have family in Iraq.”

The U.S. Department of State could not answer questions about Sarhan’s visa because the agency does not release information on individual visas, said spokesman Karl Duckworth.

A representative from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request about Sarhan’s past.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N.’s refugee agency, tallied 3,440 Iraqis who resettled in the U.S. in 1992, the year Sarhan arrived.

Sheriff’s investigators still want to know which agency sponsored him to come here as a refugee, what activities made him run afoul of Iraq’s now-defunct Baathist regime and where they can find his surviving relatives.

After a little research I found that there are two women who could tell Sheriff’s investigators how he came to be in the US and where his relatives might be because both were involved with the Iraqi refugees who came after the First Gulf War (and are still bringing Iraqis to the US).   Terry Rusch, the head of admissions today for the US State Department’s Office of Population, Refugees and Migration knows, or knows where to find the information and so does Lavinia Limon head of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

You know what is worse than an Iraqi refugee gone bad, or federal officials not helping local law enforcement, it’s the fact that this guy was missing for 8 years and no one seemed to know or care.   It continues to surprise our readers to learn that refugees are brought to the US and can literally disappear often within weeks of arrival.  Someday one of those will be a terrorist.