Category: Iraqi refugees

Pro Bono American lawyers working in Iraq

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I came across this the other day and don’t know its full import, but throw this out to those of you following the Iraqi refugee issue.   I was surprised to see such a large effort going on behind the scenes to get Iraqis here (and it doesn’t sound like they are focusing on the truly persecuted Christians!).   My atennae went up when these immigration lawyers called their work a “paradigm shift in refugee resettlement.”

The violent complexity that is Iraq includes professionals now fleeing their country in fear of tormentors who consider the assistance they gave American lawyers and other U.S. government officials in Baghdad during the trial of Saddam Hussein to be a holy crime, akin to that of collaborating with Christian crusaders of centuries past.

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Until the cause of the tormented became the pro bono passion of attorneys Eric A. Blinderman of New York and Christopher Nugent of Washington, D.C., these Iraqi refugees were left to the common cruelties of the Middle East and a painfully slow response to their plight from the U.S. government.

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“If I may say so, we’ve created a paradigm shift in refugee resettlement,” said Mr. Nugent, 40, senior counsel with Holland & Knight’s community services team and a veteran immigration lawyer.

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By a combination of law and custom, he explained, refugees are not allowed to have attorneys present during their multiple interviews before a battery of officials, beginning with United Nations agencies and ending up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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“But we send correspondence, and it’s accepted,” said Mr. Nugent. “We’re not going to insist on our presence at interviews, but we are accepted as counsel of record. We prepare our clients for these interviews.”

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Mr. Nugent and Mr. Blinderman have, in turn, recruited a total of 100 lawyers from their respective firms to aid those trying to escape Iraq, and those detained by authorities in neighboring states where torture is common – Syria, Jordan and Egypt in particular.

As you read down the article you will see they also praise the Kennedy (Bring More Iraqis to American Sooner Than Later) bill that was likely signed into law by President Bush this week attached to the Defense Authorization bill.  *Note:  As of noon time (12/28), Fox News is reporting that Bush will veto the Defense Authorization Bill.

And, finally this sealed my suspicion that maybe this wasn’t such a good thing.  Referring to an Iraqi translator working for the lawyers, Blinderman is quoted:

Ibrahim’s salary, said Mr. Blinderman, is provided by an anonymous donor.

Who?  The State Department?  Volags?  CAIR?  Some Islamic “charity”?   Refugees International?  Ted Kennedy? The Saudis?  Grover Norquist or David Keene?    Actually I’m getting silly, but why can’t we know?   

David Keene of the American Conservative Union: “Bring more Iraqis”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I really don’t get it.  Why are people like Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene of the American Conservative Union so hot to support Ted Kennedy’s bill to bring more Iraqis here now?  Here is Keene yesterday at Frontpage Magazine.    No doubt there are some sad cases and some possible screw ups regarding helping interpretors who helped us in Iraq, and we surely aren’t doing enough for the Christian Iraqis,  but for so-called conservatives to criticize Homeland Security for being too careful about terrorism is mind-boggling!

And, for a man who is supposed to be one of Washington’s smart people to throw out this tired comparison to the Vietnam war is troubling.  Does he think we are idiots?

[Promotors of bringing more Iraqis now] have seen film footage of the U.S. evacuation of our embassy in Saigon at the end of the war we fought there while those who helped us were left to the tender mercies of our communist enemy.

I’m just going to repeat over and over again, this is not Vietnam.  We have not abandoned Iraq.  And, we did ultimately bring more than 100,000 Vietnamese  refugees here but we didn’t have to worry whether Islamic terrorists were interspersed among the women and children.

As for the sad case Mr. Keene lays out, he and his powerful friends could make sure “Timmy” gets to America, we don’t need Ted Kennedy’s bill to do that.   (Mr. Norquist could call Mr. Rove who could call the President who in turn could call Madame Secretary and Mr. Chertoff and voila Timmy could be here in the blink of an eye.)  And, surely Mr. Keene would let him live at his house saving the taxpayers the expense of putting him up.

This [the Kennedy bill] would seem to solve Timmy’s problem, but the good folks at the Department of Homeland Security, apparently operating on the theory that if they don’t let any Iraqis at all into this country they can’t be blamed if a terrorist makes it in, are proposing new hurdles that will make it even more difficult for people like Timmy to make it over here.

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DHS, which hasn’t been able to do much to keep anyone who wants to sneak across our southern border from doing so, seems willing to go to any length to make sure that those willing to fight and die beside our troops will be forever barred.

Honest to goodness this sounds like a leftwinger has written this!   I think if you asked most Americans they would be applauding Homeland Security for erring on the side of protecting us from terrorism.

We first wrote about this back in August.  See our story here.  See our discussion of the Kennedy (bring’em to Hyannisport, not!) bill here.   We have written 65 posts on the Iraqi refugee issue, if you are new to RRW, check out the Iraqi refugee category here.

Iraqis in Syria, new UN survey underway

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The United Nations hopes to have completed a survey of Iraqi refugees in Syria by January, however early figures are being released.  I assume the early release is to help keep the drum beating to bring more Iraqis here now.  Here are some interesting bits from a McClatchy News story of a few days ago.

The survey may provide some insight into the impact of U.S. actions. The preliminary results suggest that as American forces moved into Baghdad’s neighborhoods to establish security, large numbers of Iraqis moved out.

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Of the refugees polled, 78 percent said they’d come from Baghdad , which has been the focus of military operations since the U.S. troop buildup began last February. Thirty-five percent said they’d fled between July and October, when U.S. troop strength peaked. Another 30 percent said they’d fled to Syria last year, as violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims intensified.

As you will see the spin here is that somehow we cause the Iraqis to flee and no one ever suggests that maybe some of those fleeing are the bad guys.   This survey found that about half of the refugees they surveyed were men while an earlier survey we reported on here indicated that 73% were men and most of those were aged 18-50.   We asked if it was possible that a large portion of the “refugees” were fighters leaving Iraq as the surge began. 

Then this is how this article wraps up:

The survey indicates that Iraqis are losing faith in their prospects of resettlement abroad and are focusing more on survival in Syria . The number of refugees who said they’d registered with the U.N. primarily for the chance of resettlement dropped from 27 percent last May to 15 percent in November. About half now say their main reason for registering is to obtain refugee certificates, which help them gain food assistance and school vouchers in Syria .

I just did a quick look at the survey and don’t see anything about “losing faith in their prospects of resettlement abroad”.     Notice that only 15% (and it’s dropping) want to resettle elsewhere!   Is it possible that the number is dropping because they want to go home to Iraq?

And as for that last statement, the reporter should have said over 60 percent are seeking assistance with food, schooling, and medical assistance and that is why they have registered with the UN.    A statistic not addressed is that 23% were threatened and thus have registered with the UN, but no one tells us by whom they are threatened. 

Also, it appears that another important statistic was overlooked (maybe I missed it), or maybe it will be in the final report in January.  What percentage of the refugees are Christian, Sunni or Shite?

See the whole survey here.

Iraqi refugees to Houston, another “lack of will” story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s laughable to watch how these refugee stories spread around the country using the same phraseology.   Here is another one from Houston, TX.    And, yet another organization involved.  These refugee groups are breeding like rabbits it seems.   The Refugee Council USA has a website but there appear to be no financial documents available to the public;  it looks like a lobbying outfit seeking more money all around for refugee resettlement.  [It is the same M.O. as the global warming ‘crisis’.  Hype = more government funding]

“There is a huge need and a lack of will,” said Elizabeth Campbell, director of Refugee Council USA, a Washington-based coalition. “They are failing to meet their own targets. People who worked for the United States find their lives are in imminent danger, and to simply leave them there is despicable.”

Then we have our old buddy Jacob Kurtzer from Refugees International, but this time he is a “researcher” (not a “congressional advocate”) trumpeting the same theme:

“When we talk of the lack of political will by this administration, we are thinking of President (Gerald) Ford, who gave a presidential order so there could be an airlift of 135,000 Vietnamese at the time of the fall of Saigon. He recognized the vulnerability of a huge population of South Vietnamese,” Kurtzer said.

There is one big differance here, maybe two.  First, the war is not over and we haven’t abandoned Iraq like we did Vietnam, and secondly the Vietnamese didn’t have terrorists hiding in their refugee ranks who wished to kill us.

It is so blatantly political it’s disgusting.  There are definitely some desparate Iraqis, the Christians, but these refugee lobbyists are so partisan they hurt those with a  legitimate claim to protection.

By the way, Refugees International is headed by Mr.Partisan himself, Ken Bacon.  Maybe you will recall that he was the guy working in the Clinton Defense Department who released Linda Tripp’s personel file to reporters during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Iraqis headed to Everett, WA, get warning from local Iraqis

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today the Herald Net announced that Everett will likely be an Iraqi receiving area in the new year.   The story pretty much starts out in the usual template format for feel-good refugee stories, like this standard pitch about the plight of the Iraqis who worked for us.

“One of the most vulnerable groups is those people who have worked for the United States,” said Jacob Kurtzer, a congressional advocate for Refugees International in Washington, D.C. “If a man has been embedded with our troops, how can he then be a security risk?”

First, I just loved this newfangled terminology “congressional advocate”.   Mr. Kurtzer is obviously a lobbyist for Refugees International whose job it is to keep the refugee flow flowing into US and thus keep the refugee industry alive.  He is throwing out what he considers the most appealing argument to get ’em here soon, but the actual number of Iraqis “embedded with our troops” and seeking resettlement is minuscule, probably numbering less than 1000. 

Every refugee, whether a teenager from Myanmar or an adult from Afghanistan, undergoes a strict screening process, Kurtzer said. The federal government’s claim that additional security measures were needed reflected a lack of political will to remove Iraqis from danger, he said.

Mr. Kurtzer, if we call your office in Washington, will you tell us exactly what the “strict screening process” is? We would really like to know!

I’m no fan of the the Bush Administration, but this statement suggesting that the Administration has some irrational “lack of political will” to resettle refugees demonstrates that Mr. Kurtzer does not know or is not saying that there has been an on-going internal battle within the government between the US State Department and Homeland Security on the security question.  We reported this to you last week.   It is not in Mr. Kurtzer’s best interests to let the citizens of Everett in on this bit of information.

This is what really caught my attention in the Everett news story:

It’s unclear how many Iraqis live in Western Washington, but those who live in Everett say their community numbers nearly 1,000 people and is one of the largest and most close-knit in the western U.S. Many of Everett’s Iraqis came here from Basra in the early 1990s, after they resisted Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and more trickled in early this century.

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If more Iraqis come to Everett, the Iraqis who already live here will welcome them only if they have never been connected to Hussein’s Baathist government, al Ali said. “We have a good life here,” al Ali said. “If we know that somebody worked for Saddam, we’ll tell the FBI.”

We have asked in many previous posts in our Iraqi refugee category if we are just going to import thousand- year-old Middle East problems to America.  Sooner or later we are going to find out.

By the way, Washington State has received 89,719 refugees between 1983-2005 according to Appendix A of the 2005 Annual Report to Congress.  A quick look confirms that Washington State is the 4th largest refugee resettlement state in the US.