Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqi refugees suffer in El Cajon, CA

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s the same old story.  We have posted dozens like this story ever since Refugee advocates have pushed for more and more Iraqis to be resettled in the US.  As a matter of fact, in this fiscal year (5 months old) we have resettled 6,959 Iraqi refugees—the highest number of any ethnic group this year.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from El Cajon, Calif. – Bomb blasts, torture and years of exile had all but ruined the Azeez family of Iraq. So the news sounded promising: Their refugee application had been approved. Abdul, his wife, Haifaa, and their four adult children were coming to America.

The family of Mandeans, a persecuted religious minority in Iraq, had left behind almost everything in their Baghdad home but planned to create a new life in El Cajon.

One year later, Abdul, 49, fiddles with worry beads as he paces in his two-bedroom town house. His three sons scour the streets competing for jobs with Mexican immigrants.* Haifaa, 49, bends her brittle, bomb-shattered back to light rose-scented candles and prays.

Abdul, once a wealthy merchant who owned jewelry stores in Iraq, was counting on government support to resettle, but the eight months of payments have run out. The family members still lack work, as do many Iraqi refugees they encounter around town.

“Why are they bringing Iraqis here? There are no jobs,” Azeez said.

Similar accounts of fading immigrant dreams are increasingly common in this San Diego suburb, where thousands of Iraqi refugees crowd apartment complexes, welfare lines and English-language schools, their appreciation for the United States tested by the specter of poverty.

No jobs for refugees!  But, to partially answer Mr. Azeez’s question about why you are here.  It is because the agencies responsible for resettling you want to continue to keep their jobs!  No refugees, then they too are out of their taxpayer-funded work.  In addition they expect you to be grateful, so grateful that you will vote to keep the Democrats in power.

An estimated 80% of the refugees are jobless, according to community leaders and social service agencies.

Going back to the Middle East?

In bleak moments, family members wonder why they came to the United States. They had options, including Sweden and Australia. They’ve considered returning to Syria, where at least they understand the language and there is a small Mandean community.

This is a good time to consider the words of an Iraqi refugee boy who seems wiser by far than all the high paid refugee industry professionals inside and outside government.

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

* This mention of competition for jobs with Hispanics reminded me that yesterday a reader, Cap, criticized me for posting on RRW that story about a rancher allegedly murdered by an illegal alien because Cap thinks I shouldn’t be mixing the two—legal and illegal aliens.  However, it is the refugee resettlement agencies mixing the two.  I continue to be outraged that federal refugee contractors are lobbying for amnesty for illegal aliens while their job is to resettle legal refugees and help them find work.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Services, and Church World Service all actively sponsored that Marxist March on Washington recently.  How dare they mix the two when they are almost entirely paid by the taxpayer to help Mr. Azeez’s family and others like him.

Update on unhappy Iraqis in Sacramento

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My previous post about the Overseas Processing Entities that are responsible for among other things, cultural orientation, reminded me that I needed to update readers on those Iraqis (with special immigrant visas) who wrote to us in January about their unhappy experiences in the US.   See their comments here to refresh your memory about their situation in Sacramento.

Then visit Friends of Refugees here, for an update on their cases—still no happy conclusion.

No jobs, not much of a life and yet we keep bringing them in.  In the first 5 months of this fiscal year we have resettled 6,959 Iraqis in the US.  I doubt most are doing any better than the two in Sacramento.

Where to complain!

As a follow-up to my post on the two Iraqis, I prepared this post listing all the places where Iraqis could complain about their situation in the US.

Comment worth noting: Kansas City refugee agency treated us badly

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers, this is a comment from an Iraqi refugee who has had problems in Kansas City, MO with his resettlement agency, Jewish Vocational Services (JVS) a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).  He is not the first to have problems with JVS.  To get the full story you should read back through 5 posts archived here.

Some readers will be tempted to be angry at the Iraqi man.  Don’t be.  It is not his fault that someone along the line sold him a bill of goods about what he was going to get in the US if he signed up to come here.   And, these agencies like JVS are almost completely funded with your tax money and we should be demanding they treat refugees decently or get out of the business!   

Presently the National Security Council under the direction of Samantha Power is doing a supposed reform of the program, but they are too chicken, as is the US State Department, to take on these powerful FEDERAL CONTRACTORS like USCRI and it is sickening to watch.  Incidentally, former USCRI VP, Eskinder Negash, is now head of the entire Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of Health and Human Services and is in charge of handing out goodies (your money) to his old friends. 

Anyway here is our commenter today.  He is a brave guy for speaking out, so let’s hope he is helped and not punished for doing so.

Dear Sir
I’m the Iraqi refugee [name removed for his safety]

I would like to announce to you what happened to us since our arrival to America, so far.
We arrived on 3 \ 12 \ 2009 and lived in a hotel and after I entered the hospital for treatment in that time the agency which responsible of us it call JVS they came and took my family to the unhealthy house and full of insects which it forced my family to live in it and but they threatened my family that if they did not live in this house they will not pay for hotel.

My family returned to the hotel and we pay to live in the hotel …. That’s make me leave the hospital on my own and I went to the agency which it responsible for us and threatened to complain against them so they admission that they was guilty and apologized to us & they pay for hotel …… Then try to fixed the house and they deal with us to live in the house temporarily until they find another house, and so was the agreement but they didn’t do what we deal and we lived in the house for two months and they came after that and said that they will deduct from each cash assistant 90% …. When I calculated by Wright that it would stay $ 80 we spend during the month, & you know its not enough for one person . we told them make it $ 150 …. but they refused on the one hand and the other hand, they said if we did not sign the lease contract of the house in which we refuse to live in it than it would chase us that’s make me rent an apartment on my our own account.

So they cut all assistant which they submitted them to us and let us live this tragedy.
and since we got so far ….. We hope that you will help us in finding a solution to the diamonds that we have come to the United States on 3 \ 12 \ 2009 period that is to say that we have no more than four months and you tell us that the aid will continue for the duration of 8 months, and they also said that …

We hope that this pleasant note of the way we live in the state of Missouri in Kansas City …. By the way this problem started on 1\3\2010
Note:- what we know that the government give $450 to each one when arrived to the city ( its gift) ………. But they took it & didn’t gave it to us

Remember the other day at the “celebration” for the 30th anniversary of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 a Burmese refugee asked “where is the money going?”  We would like to know the answer to that too!

Check the numbers here!  Note that the Obama Administration is on target to bring 80,000 refugees to the US in the middle of the recession.  Iraqis are presently topping the list of refugees arriving.  I believe Obama and his minions are deliberately destabilizing US cities by using the refugees and immigrants as pawns in a larger political game.  It is the only explanation that makes any sense.  Remember this:

I’m reminded of the Iraqi boy wise beyond his years!    I told you about him in September of 2008, here.   He summed up his observations about the unhappy situation with Iraqi refugees in a letter to the editor to the Tucson Citizen with this line:

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

Frankly, the State Department should be readying airlifts home for any refugee profoundly angry or unhappy (paid for out of the funds of the volag that didn’t do its job)!  But, they won’t, because to do so they would have to admit that the whole program is flawed, so they just let the refugees suffer.  So much for compassion!

Frustrated and sick of this?  Complain here!   Do not forget to copy your complaints to your two US Senators and your Congressman (add in your governor and state representatives for good measure).

GAO Report released on Iraqi refugees’ dire situation in US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ho hum, not much here that we haven’t reported over the last couple of years, but thought you should know that the GAO (General Accountability Office) has written a report that basically says Iraqi refugees can’t find work (nor can the other tens of thousands of refugees arriving in the US this year!).   Here is CNN’s summary of the report:

Iraqi refugees face steep challenges in resettling in the United States, including homelessness and unemployment amid an economic downturn, government auditors said Tuesday.

According to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday, the dire economic situation has “has made jobs normally available to refugees, such as entry-level jobs with limited English proficiency, scarce and more competitive.”

Even though Iraqi refugees have “relatively high levels of education,” the GAO said in the report, the U.S. resettlement program, in looking for jobs for refugees, does not take into account their prior work experience and education.

“Rather, the focus of the program is on securing early employment for
refugees,” the office said.

Many resettlement agencies say that it is taking as long as six months, and in some cases, as many as 10 months, for incoming Iraqi refugees to find employment, the GAO said.

Citing the International Rescue Committee, the GAO said that there are “high levels of trauma, injury, and illness” among Iraqi refugees.

“Moreover, unemployment and homelessness threaten Iraqi refugees and other populations recently resettled in the United States,” the GAO said, citing non-governmental organizations and resettlement agencies.

Some Iraqi refugees face eviction because they cannot pay rent, the report said.

The report said that the United States admitted 34,470 Iraqi refugees under the State Department’s Refugee Admissions Program between fiscal years 2006 and 2009. In addition, the GAO said, the State Department issued 4,634 special immigrant visas to Iraqis pursuant to two programs that Congress established to help Iraqis who had previously worked for the U.S. government in Iraq.

Most of them are in California, Michigan, Texas, Arizona, Illinois and Virginia, the report said.  [many other states too-ed]

See the whole report here.  Your tax dollars at work, when we are giving you the same information for free!

Knowing all this for a couple of years as they have and we have, why would the Center for American Progress (Soros-funded outfit and home to Van Jones and John Podesta) have urged that we airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US?  Was that to get more money for the resettlement contractors, or are the refugees just pawns in a larger political game as we learned with Clinton/Gore/Podesta and the Kosovars in 1999, here.

Iraqi refugees to vote in upcoming elections. Will they return?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s been hard to get information on the Iraqi refugees who fled to surrounding countries during the sectarian violence. Since George W. Bush left office, the media don’t seem to care about them. Now there’s a helpful and interesting report in Slate, of all places, titled Will the Exiles Return to Iraq? It is written by Deborah Amos and the subhead is “Sunday’s election is a test of the permanence of the division between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites.” It begins:

As Iraqis prepare for parliamentary elections on March 7, election fever has been rising in a seemingly unlikely place: Damascus, Syria. Syria is a haven for the largest community of Iraqi exiles, and many of them say they will cast their ballots far from home.

“Yes, I will vote,” Omar Fadhil insisted when I met him in his shabby apartment in Damascus. A Sunni Arab, he fled to Syria last year after closing his music shop in Baghdad when militants threatened to blow it up. “Those in Iraq don’t represent the real Iraqis, the artists and the scholars,” he maintained. The overwhelming majority of exiles in Syria, more than 70 percent, are professionals and technocrats from Baghdad.

Under a new election law, the externally displaced have voting power, because their vote counts as if they were living in their home province. Voter registration began this week; an Iraqi passport counts as proof of citizenship, but so does a U.N. refugee registration card. Iraq’s electoral commission expects as many as 180,000 exiles to cast ballots in 23 voting centers across Syria, and Iraq’s Sunni politicians are courting the exile vote.

According to the article, about 60 percent of the refugees are Sunnis and 15 percent Christian.  They fled when the majority Shiites took vengeance after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s Baath Party was Sunni, though this sect is a minority in Iraq.  America’s military surge and accompanying pacification policy was aimed at ending the sectarian violence. So the issue for the Sunni refugees in the election is whether they will be welcomed back as fellow Iraqis, or face the prospect of continued terrorizing if they return. According to the article, the prospect doesn’t look all that good.

A year ago, in the provincial elections, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition won a majority on a nationalist agenda, campaigning on the themes of Iraqi unity, good governance, and improved services. At the time, Maliki courted Sunni politicians as well as Sunni votes, and his success seemed to indicate that the sectarian divide was closing, if not healing. Iraqi exiles, especially in the Sunni community, noted the change and, as a result, the exiles became more transient: One member of the family would be sent back to Baghdad to collect pensions, back pay, or to work for a few months to support the extended family exiled in Syria. These were the scouts for a larger movement home. But sectarian tensions are on the rise again as Shiite politicians stir populist fears of the return of the outlawed Baath Party that ruled the country in Saddam’s day.

 Whether the Iraqis overcome their sectarian hostility is really the key question for Iraq’s future. So we will wait for the results of the elections, and hope they will vote as Iraqis rather than Sunnis and Shiites.

The tone of this report is remarkably different from the pieces that used to appear. It’s taken a long time for media opinion to come around to the fact that the Iraqi refugees need to go home, rather than settle by the millions in western countries, or whatever cockamamie idea they were pushing. This piece pretty much takes it for granted, and concludes that Iraq will not be stabilized until the refugees do go back. They were previously integral to the society and are needed; if they can’t go back it will be because sectarian tensions are still a destructive force there.

I want to mention a U.S. government report on Iraqi refugees from January that I came across as I was writing this post.  It’s a report to Congress from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, too long for me to read right now, but I don’t want to lose the link so I’m putting it here.

I also want to point out that Ann has written somewhere close to a million posts on Iraqi refugees in the United States. Almost uniformly they report on difficulties, mistreatment, dissatisfaction, misbehavior, and other negative things. That’s one more reason it is essential that as many Iraqi refugees go home as possible — those in Syria, Jordan, and other surrounding countries, and with them perhaps many who are now in the United States as well.

Update 3/6/10: A report in the Christian Science Monitor says on the first day of voting more Iraqis in Syria voted than expected, though many “disillusioned” refugees declared their intention not to vote.