Category: Iraqi refugees

State Dept. briefing on Iraqi refugees, Part I, “gosh I missed my flight”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

On February 4th representatives of the US State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security held a joint press briefing on the Iraqi refugee situation and on the new “Kennedy” Iraqi refugee bill that President Bush signed into law last week.  We have posted on issues raised in that briefing here, here, and here.    However, there are several points  in the 14-page transcript that were not mentioned in the AP story or the Washington Post story for whatever reason.

As you have gathered from those previous posts,  the Administration is being bombarded by refugee advocates who contend that the process is too slow, so that is the context in which this press briefing is occurring.  

I’m going to post on the points I wish to make, the points the mainstream media isn’t mentioning, in small doses over the next couple of days, partly because I’m tired and I expect you don’t want to read a lengthy treatise.

This is Ambassador James Foley speaking about one of the reasons why the process is so slow:

There are no-show referrals, in other words, refugees who do not appear for pre-screening with our Overseas Processing Entity having been referred by UNHCR. There are no-shows for the DHS adjudication interviews. There are no-show departures. In other words, applicants who don’t appear at the airport to take their scheduled flight to the U.S. There are different reasons for the attrition. Some families return to Iraq at different points in the processing. Some applicants pursue both special immigrant visa and refugee processing at the same time and they ultimately opt for the SIV route. Some applicants treat the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program as a kind of a safety net and when the time comes to board the plane for the U.S., it turns out that they’re not ready to depart. And finally some applicants change their minds about wanting to resettle in the U.S.

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The attrition shows up in our statistics. For example, our OPEs have been unable to locate 608 refugees referred to our program. There have been 227 no-shows for pre-screening – OPE pre-screening or DHS interviews or medical appointments. There were 104 no-shows for departure flights that had to be rescheduled, which takes a certain amount of work and of man-hours to accomplish. And there are 51 more who missed their first departure flights who still need to be rescheduled. And finally we’ve closed the cases of 25 individuals who did not show up at all for departure flights.

So, here is the question we keep asking over and over again?  If the refugees are in such desperate straits why would they walk out on this fabulous opportunity to come to America?    This is my partial answer:  The refugee industry is driving this.   Most Iraqis just want to go home, but the refugee industry requires warm bodies to fuel the business—no refugees, no federal grants and contracts. 

Refugee advocates, the volags and their lobbyists, want to return to the glory days when hundreds of thousands of refugees entered the US from Vietnam and later Bosnia in the wake of a war—a guaranteed steady stream of refugees assures that volag offices stay open and employees have steady salaries.   They need the faucet opened wide and flowing steadily.

 Oh, incidentally, all those missed flights mentioned above,  you, the taxpayers, are paying for them.

Mr. Bacon, this makes no sense!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve written before about Refugee International’s head honcho, Ken Bacon.  Yesterday, Mr. Bacon breathlessly reported on his blog World:Bridge: 

I spent the afternoon with a whirlwind working to protect Iraqi refugees in Egypt.

He is talking about his afternoon in a Cairo apartment huddled with assorted activists (see the list here) on the Iraqi Refugee Crisis. 

All have been inspired and educated by Barbara Harrell-Bond. All are passionate in their commitment.

 Among the group are two Iraqi refugees. 

But for two in the group, the passion is turning into fear and frustration. The two Iraqi refugees–both highly fluent in English, both former workers for the U.S. cause in Iraq—have begun the long process of trying to resettle in the U.S. They are running out of money; one already had to send his wife and child back to Baghdad.

This doesn’t make sense!  If it is so dangerous to stay in Iraq for anyone who ever worked for us or their families how is it that any decent man would send his wife and child there.   Think of the men in your life, would they ever in a million years do such a thing—send their family into danger while they lolled around garden apartments in Cairo with a bunch of political activists and film makers?

Administration still slow bringing in Iraqi refugees (sound of snoring)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I came home last night to 7 Yahoo Alerts about the latest admission figures for Iraqi refugees.  I had to laugh, the stories were reported 2 hours and 10 minutes ago, 40 minutes ago, 1 hour and 5 minutes ago and so on.  This is how you do it—you absolutely bombard the public with the same story month after month after month and eventually there is movement.  It helps too to have a friendly Associated Press reporter!

I went back to this post I did at the end of October to see who the AP reporter was and unfortunately the link has expired, but I am sure it’s the same reporter, Matthew Lee, who had this to say last night:

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration conceded Monday it may not meet its goal to admit 12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, although officials stressed that remained their target.

[ ]

While January admissions improved slightly over December, to 375 from 245, the United States must still accept 10,568 Iraqi refugees in the next eight months if it is to reach 12,000 — the number the administration has pledged to resettle in the current budget year, which began in October 2007 and runs until Sept. 30.

I’ll bet Mr. Lee is friendly with the refugee industry folks in Washington, perhaps lobbyists at Refugees International and he is poised and ready each month to take a whack at the Bush Administration.  However, when the October figures came out, Mr. Lee was on the story before the stroke of midnight.  This month he is 4 days late!

The administration has come under heavy criticism from advocacy groups and lawmakers for its poor performance on admitting Iraqi refugees who have fled violence since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Many critics say, and Bush aides have acknowledged, that the administration has a moral obligation to Iraqi refugees.

In fairness to Mr. Lee there is always an oblique mention that the security issues are not resolved and that problems exist trying to interview Iraqis in Syria, but it is always later in the story and the security problems are never explored in depth.

Despite improved cooperation between the departments of State and Homeland Security in refugee processing, admissions have lagged in part because of restrictions placed on interviewers, particularly in Syria……

As we reported just last week in addition to the magic 12,000 figure for Iraqis and in addition to the 70,000 refugee figure for the entire FY 2008, Congress sneaked through an additional 5000 Iraqis in the Defense Authorization bill signed by the President.

President Bush signed Iraqi refugee bill earlier this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The President quietly signed into law the “Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act” as part of the 2008 Dept. of Defense Authorization Act.  We’ve written on many occasions about this amendment which was attached in the dark of night to the Defense authorization bill without hearings or public discussion because Senators know that if these things are done in the light of day people would be furious.   The bill calls for 5000 special visas to be made available for Iraqi refugees each year for the next 5 years, but presumably this is in addition to the 12,000 the administration already plans to bring in FY 2008 alone.

I planned to bring your attention to another pro-immigration group (another place to find information on refugees and asylees) tonight and just happened to find their joyful press release dated today.   The group is called Human Rights First, but if you are a middle class taxpaying American citizen your human rights will not be first.

And, if you are an American who has lost a loved one in Iraq, fighting to give freedom to the Iraqis, this law is going to be a bitter pill to swallow when an able-bodied young Iraqi Muslim man is living next door to you.

Iraqis arriving in Manchester, NH

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to the Manchester Union Leader today, New Hampshire will be getting a new wave of refugees beginning with Iraqis and followed by Burundians. 

Eight Iraqi refugees, including two physicians, will fly from Turkey to New Hampshire this week to rebuild their lives nearly 6,000 miles from their war-battered homeland.

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They will receive medical check-ups, tuberculosis tests, English training and food stamps to help get them started in their new world. In return, they are expected to get a job within 4 1/2 months and eventually pay back their airfare to America.

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They are part of the first wave of Iraqi refugees fleeing the war to land in New Hampshire.

The article goes on to report that Manchester has had its share of refugees since the Refugee Act of 1980 went into effect.

 Since 1980, more than 5,000 refugees — roughly the population of Auburn or New Boston — have been resettled in Manchester from a variety of countries.

But the article was strangely silent on the ruckus that occured there a few years ago when residents of the city went ballistic when Somali Bantu arrived there in large numbers.  I guess the refugee agencies have figured that the city had calmed down enough to bring more refugees.   The article says the Iraqis are well educated, many speak English and had been translators (uh oh!), but the Burundians have lived in camps since 1972.

One thing is for sure, if the Iraqi doctors aren’t happy with America, like those Iraqis who have gone to Arizona, they won’t be getting a ticket home anytime soon.

“They left their houses, they left family members, they’re coming to a new culture,” he [Nabil Migalli, chairman of the Arab-American Forum]* said. “Will they go back to Iraq? Maybe some people might want to go back to Iraq. The situation doesn’t allow that to happen immediately or in the near future.”

 No indeed, Mr. Migalli, there is work to be done here in America.

*Who is Nabil Migalli?  According to New Hampshire magazine he is IT for 2007.

New Hampshire Magazine’s it List: Consider it the guest list for the best cocktail party ever. The 2007 It List is our selection of the 34 most interesting, happening, talked about people in the state. If you got these folks all in the same room, no telling what would transpire, but you can bet it wouldn’t be boring.

I bet he would be the life of the party if he explained over cocktails (no cocktails thank you!), this bit from a letter his Arab-American Forum of New Hampshire signed when it joined International ANSWER in 2004.

In the United States, we, Arab-Americans and Muslims have been maliciously targeted, stripped of our rights, and positioned outside the constitutional framework of this country. A new COINTELPRO has been unleashed against our homes and living rooms, as our fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are plucked away and thrown into unknown prison cells.

Malicious targeting!  Stripped of rights!  Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters thrown into unknown prison cells.  AAAAAH, say it isn’t so, not in the Live Free or Die state! 

So, lets get this straight, Mr. Migalli, why then are you so eager to bring Iraqi refugees to this hell-hole of a country?