Category: Iraqi refugees

Refugees speak: revealing radio program from San Francisco

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you have about an hour and enough interest listen to this radio program (Your Call) broadcast from San Francisco for World Refugee Day last week.   I found it very informative to hear three refugees, a representative of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Livonia (whoop-de-do) Limon of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, discuss refugee resettlement in America.

Here are a few nuggets from the program and my observations and interpretations of what was said:

*  The hostess (with what I call the NPR woman voice) of the program asked the Iraqis if they were surprised by the invasion and they said ‘no’ and one mumbled something about how bad Iraq had become.  They said they were however surprised by the aftermath of the invasion (presumably the chaos with insurgents and Al-Qaeda).

*  The hostess asked these men, who were billed as fluent in English, how hard the “sanctions” were.  When the men didn’t understand what she was asking, she said something to the effect of ‘you know the “economic” sanctions that the US put on Iraq’ and still neither man could answer her.   It struck me as obvious that the “sanctions” had not affected them!

*  When the Bhutanese refugee spoke he talked about his first miserable day in America and how he and another man arrived in the city and no one met them.   They got on the wrong bus, got off in a bad neighborhood, walked around for hours, lost and thirsty, until some kind merchant gave them water.  I’m wondering where were the volag employees who are supposed to meet them.  This refugee praised America and was hardly heard from again during the program.

It gets better:

*  One of the Iraqi single young men told the audience that he was a college-educated civil engineer who had worked for Bechtel in Iraq but decided he needed a change (no mention of threats) and that he went to Dubai and got a job (they need engineers).  He said something that wasn’t completely audible but something like ‘Iraqis aren’t liked in some of those countries’.   What?  Other Middle Eastern Muslim countries are not kind to their fellow Muslims?    So he just was “looking for an opportunity” and applied as a refugee to the US and here he is.

*   Asked by the moderator of the show when did he decide he wanted to come to the US, he said, ‘I always wanted to come to the US, ever since I was 13 years old—I wanted to see the movies and TV.’

I’m listening to this Iraqi engineer and thinking, what is going on?  He didn’t sound like he was having a horrible time living in squalor and fear—he was living in Dubai with an engineer job!  Where are the destitute widows with children we hear about?  The ones supposedly selling their bodies to feed their kids!

*  The second Iraqi ‘refugee’ relates his rotten trip to the US, not to be outdone by the Bhutanese fellow.   It was long:  Jordan to Paris, Paris to NYC, NYC to San Franciso and can you believe it a kid cried in the seat behind him from Paris to NYC.   Imagine how miserable that was—flying to freedom (airfare paid by the US taxpayer) and he is annoyed by a crying child!  Life is tough!

*  This second guy had been in Jordan for surgery because he had been caught somehow in a bomb blast.  In Jordan he was helping journalists do something illegal, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying.   A Doctors without Borders employee told him he should apply to go to America as a refugee and so he did, and here he is rooming with the Iraqi engineer.

BTW, the IRC representative said at one point that they were resettling mostly single men in the Bay Area.

*  The host then asks about culture shock, but she asks how they plan to ‘maintain their Iraqi culture’ (this question is not about how they will assimilate to our culture, but how they can resist our rotten culture).

You would never guess in a million years what one of the Iraqis answered about what was so hard for him here.  The dogs!  The many dogs!   He can’t stand the dogs!  The dogs are everywhere you go! [Editor: In Islam dogs are as dirty as feces, urine and dead bodies.]    After the dogs, it’s the sex.   The moderator, wondering what about sex has shocked him and looking for clarification asks in approving tones, does he mean the same-sex marriage recently legalized in California?   No! It was the sex change operations.  What?!  I’m thinking, how many sex change operations could he have been exposed to in three months?  Then I remembered this was San Francisco.   Need I say more.

Here then are two fine examples of so-called Iraqi “refugees” we have been hearing about for years.

 

AP: Here come the Iraqis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to Always on Watch who caught this AP story by our old friend Matthew Lee.   I didn’t even have to read the whole article by Lee to know it was his writing.  He says the same things every month, except this time he can report that the rush is on—Iraqis are arriving in the US in droves.   But, the numbers are never high enough to satisfy Senator Ted Kennedy and his NGO friends.    Kennedy is proposing a special White House ambassador to deal exclusively with Iraqi displaced persons.

Here are three things Lee says every month:

The 12,000 target is still far lower than the number admitted by other countries and only a small slice of the some 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

He reaffirms we are a bad bad country because we don’t admit enough refugees, but never mentions that many of Iraq’s displaced people have been displaced for many years (before our arrival in Iraq) due to Saddam’s reign of terror.   Lee:

Sweden, for example, has granted asylum to about 40,000 since 2003.

Lee never tells you that Sweden has begun deporting Iraqi Muslims and is trying very hard to stop the flow.  Lee:

Advocacy groups and lawmakers have criticized the U.S. for its poor performance on admitting Iraqi refugees.

And, finally, Associated Press reporter Lee never never gets a comment from anyone who is concerned about security issues.  It’s all about reaching this arbitrary magic number of 12,000 Iraqis from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, etc. admitted to the US in FY08—to live in your hometown.

If you are interested in seeing how AP controls the news on this topic, check out our archive on Matthew Lee’s reporting here.

Iraqi professionals find jobs in America scarce

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A blogger at something called “Principle Pictures” gives a first hand account of a group of Iraqi professionals arriving in the US and finding their former professions in Iraq mean very little here. 

On Saturday afternoon forty-eight Iraqi refugees who have resettled in the U.S. arrived at Reagan International Airport. The men wore pressed suits and ties and the women had freshly polished fingernails and high heels. They were clearly dressed to impress. In their luggage they carried a most prized possession – resumes detailing their work with American companies, the American military and the American government in Iraq. While they are a unique refugee group — all are college-educated professionals — they face the most common refugee problem: continuing their careers in America

I confess I don’t understand why the outfit that brought them, Upwardly Global, brings immigrants to America with the expectation that they will walk into good jobs.  It seems cruel.  We have seen one story after another from around the country where educated refugees are cleaning motels or cutting meat. 

We even had one sad sounding Iraqi college professor whose husband was a doctor write to our blog literally begging us to tell her what sort of jobs they might have in America.    How do you tell older people, formerly successful people, that they will likely have no satisfying work. 

Iraqis learned the hard truths about hunting for a job here: human resources managers spend an average of 20 seconds on every resume, personal stories (even the heart-wrenching ones they all have to tell) have no place in a job interview, the economy is terrible, resumes should be limited to a page or two (most of theirs are 3, 4 and 5 pages), and, most difficult for them to hear, don’t expect their employers in Iraq to hire them in America. 

“Iraqis are having a hard time coming to terms with the reality that while their education and skills were valued in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Basra, they are not valued here,” says Jane Leu, Upwardly Global’s founder and president. “These people were leaders in Iraq, and they will be leaders here if given the chance. The idea that all immigrants have to pull themselves up by their boot straps is outdated.”

I wrote about Upwardly Global kicking off a lobbying campaign in April to bring more Iraqis to the US here.  They are a non-profit group,  but apparently act as a head hunters for American companies.   Sounds like they fell down on the job with this group.

Read Judy’s earlier post here about how Iraqi officials do not want to lose Iraq’s professionals—they need them to rebuild Iraq. 

Answering Mike: Volag employee sends a comment worth talking about

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a comment we received last week (before my lengthy power outage) from a reader named Mike who says he is a convert to Islam and works for a refugee agency.  He posted it at the Fact Sheet at the top of our site where it wouldn’t get many readers and I thought it was important enough to put up as a post and answer his allegations and questions.

Mike begins:

I work in refugee resettlement. I’m a born American (white) and a convert from Christianity (Protestant) to Islam. I served in the US Air Force as a linguist during the first war in Iraq. I’m married to an east African woman.

After reading much of this site, I can’t tell exactly what the point is. Refugee resettlement in the US is undoubtedly flawed. You will get no argument from me on that.

Mike says that Refugee resettlement is flawed but he doesn’t see the point of our blog.     The point, Mike, is that because it is flawed the program must be discussed.   If people can’t openly talk about the flaws, then they will never be rectified.    The program has existed under a sort of halo.  Just because some say they are doing good works— discussing the programs flaws, especially in the mainstream media, has become taboo.

Mike goes on:

But is what upsets you so much the fact that many families being resettled in the US are Muslim? If you are against Muslims and/or Islam, that is your right but there would be no reason to argue about it. You must judge an individual and, if you’re Christian or Jewish, you have more than enough of your own issues to confront.

We have no problem with Muslims who want to accept American culture and government and have no desire to bring Shariah law to the US.    As for your statement about judging people, it doesn’t fit with another comment you sent us.  I gotta be honest this (from Mike!) sounds a tad bit prejudiced (in response to Judy’s post about Germany taking Christian Iraqis):

Iraqis, whether Christian or whatever else, do not have a European mentality. They still sit on the floor, eat with their right hand and wash their butts with their left hand. Iraqi refugees, no matter what religion, will still be spoiled and expect too much. They’ll yell a lot, smoke a lot, and want to hang out with each other only. They’ll take up German real estate to build a church of their own so they can have sermons in Arabic or Assyrian, so they can marry each other and not assimilate with Germans. Don’t kid yourselves.

Back to Mike’s first comment:

The reformation of resettlement in the US is something that should be discussed openly, as it is incredibly flawed. Contrary to what many think, the US gvt should not resettle people for purely humanitarian reasons. There must be some economic benefit to us as a nation or we’re waisting time and money.

So Mike agrees that we should discuss reform of Refugee resettlement.  Good!  We are on the same wavelength.   Then Mike tells us something we have been guessing at—refugee resettlement is not all about America being a humanitarian nation—it is or should be about economics.   I think Tysons Food agrees there.

This from Mike is all very revealing:

The problems are, of course, rooted in policy at the highest levels of federal gvt. Current policy states that factors such as age, physical/mental disabilities, education, and work experience should not be considered when considering an individual for resettlement. I don’t think this is wise.

Recently the agency I work for resettled a single Burundian man, 74 yrs old, without relatives or friends in this area. He had health problems and couldn’t speak a word of English or Swahili (a common language among east and central Africans). The man died alone in his apartment less than two months after being resettled. It was a tragedy, first and most importantly, on a human level, as he was alone and far from anything familiar. It was also tragic that so many people spent so much time and money to fly him tens of thousands of miles to die alone. One example of how age and health should be considered when processing (the term used) a refugee for resettlement.

This sad story reminds me of the refugee from Africa who came to our county and was profoundly unhappy, didn’t want to work, was evicted from his apartment and only wanted to go home to Africa.  I don’t know what happened to him, but I think the volags should be required to buy plane tickets home for these sad displaced people.

Mike then says he could speak for days on what we write about.  Mike we welcome your comments to our posts.

I could speak for days on some of the issues raised on this website, some of them I agree with. My last word here, however, is to implore those who are angry and resentful not to be angry at those who are being resettled. They are men and women, like ourselves, with children and a profound hope for a better future in the greatest country on Earth. If we encourage them, welcome them, and HELP THEM TO ASSIMILATE many of them will become great contributers to our local communities and our greater society.

As Katie Mathis wrote above, Jesus was a refugee. There are so many Bible passages about welcoming the stranger. It is a Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (believe it or not) tradition and a basic human virtue that we should all strive for.

Mike, when individual refugees and families are not treated compassionately in a community, the blame rests on the volags and the federal government for not preparing communities, for acting secretively, for treating communities as potential redneck (no offense to rednecks!) enclaves, and for generally not explaining to citizens the refugee programs and perks so that resentment builds. 

Finally Mike ends with these thoughts:

By the way, resettlement agencies usually do not know that a family will come to them from one of the ten volags until a month or so before that family comes. That’s when we get what’s called an Arrival Notification. We would love to have more communication with local communities where the families will be resettled but most of the time it simply isn’t possible – at least for us here.

I think a reform of the program could solve the problem of springing this on communities.  And, to Mike’s very last comment, I hope you are right and if you aren’t —I’ll hunt you down!  (Just kidding!)

 And there’s no grand scheme for Muslims to take over the country. Funny thought because we can barely organize our own mosques. As a Muslim I can promise you it’ll never happen.

We buy plane tickets for Iraqi refugees and they don’t show up!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night a reader sent the transcript of the State Department press briefing where intrepid reporter, Matthew Lee, must have gotten his information.   Our reader pointed out that the whole thing reads like a shopping trip — how many Iraqis can we dig up and get to America to stick with our quota?   (By the way, they are aiming for 1000 a month.)   You gotta read the transcript and laugh because the reader hits that nail on the head.

But, then here is a part of the transcript and an example of the sort of thing the Associated Press isn’t mentioning in its articles because it presumably doesn’t fit the points they want to promote.  You know: desperate suffering refugees, it’s all our fault they are refugees, we must bring them to America ASAP and Bush is bad.

Ambassador (we deserve to be whipped) Foley mentioned that in the last month there were 114 no-shows—refugees who had been processed and reached the point of having airline tickets in hand and they never showed up at the airport. 

We also had, unfortunately, 114 “no shows.” In other words, these were refugees who had passed successfully every stage of the process: they were approved, they were cleared, they were booked, they had tickets, they were supposed to get on airplanes and they were unable to travel because it turned out that either they did not have the necessary exit permits or it was believed that they did not have the necessary exit permits. We also have some, frankly, as I told you before, refugees who simply don’t – for unknown reasons – appear even though they have been – have their airplane tickets. So there’s a certain amount of attrition that we have to deal with, and the arrival numbers would have been really in the 1,250 range had we not had those no shows.

Just wondering what that cost the US taxpayer? 

This admission intrigued some reporters who jumped in with questions.   Terry Rusch (In charge of Admissions at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration) had an answer:

 Yeah (inaudible). In one or two countries there – some places are very straightforward. In Turkey, for example, refugees who are registered have to go and live in assigned communities all around the country. And some of them do this and others don’t. If they don’t, and they haven’t completed all the requisite paperwork for registration, showing evidence they have been there throughout this period, their getting exit permits is a more complicated process. And the people who are issuing these exit permits – or not – are either not mindful or it doesn’t particularly bother them that somebody has a plane ticket for the United States. That’s not their main concern. Their main concern is they have regulations that people are supposed to have done X, Y, and Z before they issue an exit permit. So I don’t think it’s anything people are trying – preventing people from leaving to go to the United States. It’s more of a bureaucratic red tape exercise. 

Foley then reiterates how very important it is that they get this problem solved because as the year progresses they need every one of those refugees to meet their shopping quota. 

It’s bureaucratic, but these countries also take those requirements very seriously, and so we are looking at this problem. We are certainly aware that as we get near the end of the fiscal year, and we’re mindful of reaching our goal, that we want to make sure that the refugees themselves are keenly aware of the requirements so that they can meet those requirements in the various countries and not be barred from getting on airplanes.

The discussion of how hard it is to get exit visas in many countries led into a discussion of where are these refugees anyway.  I bet most reporters (and me too) thought they were exclusively in Syria and Jordan, afterall isn’t that where we keep hearing the millions of suffering are located?

But our capacity was much more robust and remains more robust in Jordan. So I believe that we are still seeing more arrivals from Jordan than we are from Syria. But they are one and two. And then the other source countries are Egypt and Turkey and the states of the Gulf. And also, we have Iraqi refugees in disparate parts of the world, and that requires us to schedule, in effect, circuit rides not only for DHS adjudicators but for our processing entities which don’t have installations in the region. So they need to do the same thing and we send – Terry, could you describe some of the far-flung places we will process Iraqi refugees?

 Then Ms. Rusch again:

New Delhi. I think there was one processed in Beijing recently. Malaysia. Well, far-flung – Greece. But they’re turning up in lots of places.

What!!!  We are scouring the world for Iraqis?  They are in India, Turkey, the Gulf States, and China and Malaysia, and even Greece.  If those Iraqis have the wherewithal to get to China and Greece, why do we need to track them down, at enormous expense to the taxpayer, and get them to America?