Category: Iraqi refugees

IRC gets another Iraqi refugee sob story planted

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I actually haven’t had an Iraqi sob story in a couple of weeks.  Readers may recall that the IRC (International Rescue Committee) put out a report back June in which they said they needed more money for the Iraqis who are being resettled in a big way into the US right now.

This story from 3 On Your Side in Phoenix follows the classic story model we see over and over again.  It begins with this grab-your-attention line:

It was once a dream but now Iraqi refugees are finding life in America is filled with harsh pitfalls.

Then it’s followed by a sad story from an Iraqi family or two that is now struggling to survive in the US.   And, by the way, some have returned to the Middle East in disgust.

We do learn some new information, the Iraqi refugee numbers will be sliced in 2010 (that fiscal year begins Oct. 1, 2009).

The family is five of the 257 Iraqi refugees settled in Phoenix last year, according to a recent report by the International Rescue Committee (IRS) [Edit, that is funny! IRC!].  That is up dramatically from just eight in 2006, and 47 in 2007. But because of the nations’ sharp economic downturn, the IRC’s Iraqi resettlement numbers are declining with even fewer expected in 2010.

IRC spokesperson Katherine Ried says that with the U.S. job pool shrinking, it is becoming more difficult to resettle refugees because they are expected to find jobs within a month of arrival.

Then comes some boiler-plate-guilt-tripping talking points.

Upon arrival, each refugee is granted a $900 stipend by the government, an amount the IRC says does not even begin to meet basic needs, like food and rent.

Aysar asks, “How do you expect a person, he came from empty pockets to pay $800 next month?” Ried adds, “So we’re seeing that people are struggling a lot more to be able to pick up where we leave off.” 

[….]

Refugees can apply for some additional funding but the IRC maintains the U.S. resettlement program is still dangerously underfunded, adding that many immigrants are here for helping American troops.

“They put their own lives at risk, the lives of their families at risk and so we really need to be supporting them in coming to this country,” says Ried.

Now you should feel sufficiently guilty for the IRC to come in with their standard plea for money.   They never tell you that the money likely will pass through them and to their affiliates to distribute to the downtrodden!

The IRC is calling for Congress to allocate more money for refugees facing poverty and eviction.

Suggestion to IRC, why not try modeling your program after these folks in Wisconsin instead of relying on more taxpayer funding for your corporate structure.

Iraqi Palestinians protest at Al Tanaf refugee camp; let’s rethink our offer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Well, well, this story inspires more questions about the issue of Iraqi Palestinians efforts to get into the West.  We reported a few weeks ago that approximately 1350 Palestinians from Al Waleed would be coming to the US.  Now those at Al Tanaf are holding a sit-in demonstration to demand resettlement in Italy?

BAGHDAD, (PIC)– Palestinian refugees in Iraq taking refuge in Tanaf refugee camp on the Iraqi-Syrian borders on Saturday staged a sit-in before the UNRWA tent demanding their immediate evacuation from the desert camp.

The 168 refugees asked for immediate mechanism by which they could be transferred from the desert to Italy that announced readiness to accommodate them.

The protestors, who included men, women and children, handed the UNRWA representative a protest note, asking for an immediate end to their tragedy that has been ongoing in the open desert for years.

They said that their sit-in would continue until their demands were met, adding that escalatory steps would be adopted in the event those demands remained unrealized.

I thought these Iraq/Syria camps were administered by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) not UNRWA.  The latter is the UN agency specially set up and specially funded that keeps the whole Gaza Palestinian mess going for decades.  If  UNRWA is in Al Tanaf, then why aren’t they processing these Iraqi Palestinians to Gaza?  Why aren’t the Palestinians demanding they go back to their Muslim brothers in Gaza?

And, how did Italy get into this issue?  I thought Italy was having enough problems with Muslim immigration?

Then this next part really ticked me off!  The Palestinians living in Iraq were friends of Saddam Hussein and living there at his invitation.  Once Saddam met his end, the Shiites who were forced to accomodate the Palestinians took their revenge.  There has NEVER been any suggestion that Americans participated in persecution of Iraqi Palestinians!

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Iraq had fled their homes in the wake of the American occupation of Iraq after sectarian militias and the American occupation forces detained and tortured many of them leading to the death of tens of refugees.

Maybe we should re-think admitting 1350 Palestinians if they are promoting the lie that Americans persecuted them in Iraq!   Maybe they aren’t such a safe security bet?

Iraqi Palestinian update from Forbes magazine

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, writing in the July 30th, 2009 edition of Forbes magazine, fills in more details AND asks more questions about the Iraqi Palestinians due to arrive soon in the US.  Hat tip:  Jerry Gordon.   See our original post here.

Please read Ms. Rosett’s whole article.   What follows are a couple of sections that interested me the most.   Since the story broke I’ve been asked many times what exactly is the process for security screening of Saddam’s former friends.   Ms. Rosett would like to know too!

Are those security clearances flowing with such ease because among these former guests of Saddam’s regime there is almost no security risk for Americans? Or has the bar simply been set low enough to meet the UNHCR’s wish to empty the camp? Only U.S. security agencies know for sure, and they aren’t saying much.

According to U.S. officials at the departments of State and Homeland Security, interviewed recently by phone, some 1,000 Palestinians at Al Waleed have already been interviewed for admission to the U.S. They are expected to arrive by early next year. But their names and specific histories are confidential. Also confidential are the interview questions, the number of U.S. officers conducting the interviews, and the amount of time spent per interviewee.

While stressing that “National security is always at the forefront of our mind,” Homeland Security officials describe the interview process preceding the final security clearance as “non-adversarial,” with interpreters provided if needed, and efforts to make sure the interviewees “feel quite comfortable.”

Asked if any of the Palestinians from Al Waleed have been rejected on security grounds, a Homeland Security officer replied: “I can’t go into that.”  [Edit: I had heard that about 20 were rejected outright for security reasons and another 100 or so couldn’t get their facts straight in interviews, I don’t know what happens to them.]

It’s also unclear exactly where inside the U.S. these Palestinians will be resettled. Asked about the locations inside the U.S. of some 24 Palestinians who have already arrived from Iraq over the past two years, a State Department spokesman declined to say. A July 7 dispatch in the Christian Science Monitor said that most of the 1,300 or more expected from Al Waleed would go to southern California. But a State Department spokesman claimed that was not necessarily the case, adding that he would “rather not” get into specifics. He said that the actual geographic allocation inside the U.S. hadn’t been decided yet, but “They’re going to go all over.”

The Palestinians will surely be spread throughout the US, but citizens will not know they are Palestinians because they will come into the US as “Iraqi” refugees.  If they follow the usual pattern, one thing you can be sure of, they will be resettled in crime-ridden neighborhoods and they likely won’t have jobs.

Toward the end of her article, Rosett, brings up another  issue I wonder about also.   It has been reported that about 30,000 Palestinians were in Iraq before the war and only about 3000 or less are in these camps, so where are the others?   If they are mostly still  living in Iraq and if Iraq is improving, why is it necessary to move the Al-Waleed refugees to the US?  Can’t they just wait it out a little longer and be resettled back in Iraq?   Or better still, some other Muslim country!

Oh, I forgot, no Islamic country wants to take their fellow Muslims—that is Muslim charity for you.

Rosett again:

In Iraq, meanwhile, conditions for the Palestinians have been looking up. In a report last month, the UNHCR noted “the general improvement of the security situation in Iraq,” including “a marked decrease” in the number of attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods and individuals. Nonetheless, the UNHCR report went on to say that “Palestinian refugees continue to experience a deep level of uncertainty with regard to their place within the fabric of Iraqi society.”

Whether these Palestinians, once the favored guests of Saddam, will meld better into the fabric and values of American society is not a question explored by the U.N., nor does the U.S. administration appear interested in supplying much in the way of illuminating detail.

The fabric of American communities never matters to refugee advocates because by golly we all need a tolerance lesson whether we like it or not!

Iraqi refugees in bad Chicago neighborhood are trying to change their community

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Apparently a crime-ridden neighborhood for 40 years, this section of Chicago is becoming increasingly diversified and refugees are trying to get it under control.

From the Chicago Tribune:

On a typical evening in Edgewater, dozens of young men linger along the sidewalks of Thorndale Avenue near the elevated train stop. Their presence is intimidating, say many in the community, and sometimes there is drug dealing and theft.

But on Monday evenings, the scene changes. Sidewalks fill with children playing board games and adults engaged in cards and chatting over grape leaves, courtesy of local Iraqi refugees.

The organized gatherings — called Neighborhood Nights — take aim at a more than 40-year history of gang activity along the business district in the 1100 block of West Thorndale Avenue.

I hope it works out for the refugees placed in this bad neighborhood.  At least this woman is taking the initiative and not just complaining about America not taking care of her.

The diversity of Edgewater, with about 64,000 residents, is obvious on just about any street: Iraqi women in head scarves, the colorful dress of African immigrants, Bosnian men smoking, young couples pushing strollers, and active senior citizens.

Together, Edgewater and Rogers Park are home to about 3,000 Iraqi refugees, according to Ahlam Mahmood, 44, of the Iraqi Mutual Aid Society. Mahmood said Neighborhood Nights allow the community an opportunity to meet their refugee neighbors.

“We are here to say to the neighborhood that you have Iraqi refugees,” said Mahmood, a humanitarian activist who fled to Chicago seven months ago with her two children. “We are in your neighborhood. Please welcome us.”

Raleigh, NC: Same old story, unhappy Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It seems that once the mainstream media finally gets hold of a story, it becomes the same old story everywhere.   We have two such refugee issues that are now starting to bore me to death!   One is the ‘missing Somali youths’ story which I am so behind in posting on it’s shameful.  But it’s the media’s fault that I am bored because they are such lemmings and their articles are all the same.

This is the ‘unhappy Iraqi refugee’ story we see everywhere—we must have  at least 25 posts on the subject.  If you are a new reader and not yet bored out of your mind, this is about how Iraqi refugees are coming to the US in droves (thanks to the at least 2-year-old lobbying campaign put on by the refugee industry), not finding work, not being properly taken care of by the agencies contracted to do so, and complaining (loudly) to the media. 

Every one of these stories tells us about Iraqis who feel they were misled when they decided to come to the US as a refugee.  It’s the same old story in the Charlotte Observer.   First there is an Iraqi sympathy story, then the template tells us the Iraqis are so unhappy here that some want to go home.   And, usually, to be fair, there is a report that some Iraqis are happy to be in the US no matter what.   You can read all that yourself.

Here are a couple of sections of the article that I want to comment on.  This is the first:

Now, like many Iraqis, he [one of the Iraqis quoted] says he doesn’t understand why the U.S. government welcomed him if this country cannot afford him the ability to support his family. The U.S. government has provided thousands of good jobs to people in Iraq, they say, so why can’t it provide them to those who are starting over in America?

[….]

The idea that the government should provide work reflects a basic misunderstanding of the United States and its refugee program, some of those who work with refugees say.

Mark Kadel, director of the N.C. office of World Relief, one of eight agencies that work with the federal government to resettle refugees in the state, said a feeling of entitlement has made it difficult to help some Iraqis. He said most of the 52 families his group has resettled have been agreeable and eager, but some, who earned advanced degrees in Iraq, come with unrealistic expectations and balk at low-end service jobs.

“They’ll say, ‘You brought me here. You invaded our country and so you owe us,'” Kadel said. “We’re not going to spoon-feed them just like a little child. They’re going to have to start at the bottom and work their way up, just like an American.”

I know the government can’t provide them all with work (at least not until Obama gets through changing our basic economic structure), but I think the average American, if he thinks about refugees at all, expects they will be working and not living on welfare.  And, I do believe helping refugees find employment is part of the contracting agency’s duties, in this case World Relief (an Evangelical Christian organization).  When I read this excerpt, I got the impression that Mr. Kadel doesn’t even like the Iraqi “clients” in his care.

Then here is the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which is lobbying for more money for itself, weighing in with its own special spin to guilt-trip the public.

“People could be returning to extremely dangerous situations in Iraq or just complete destitution in Jordan. If that could be better than their life in the United States, that’s a reflection on the program,” said IRC spokeswoman Melissa Winkler. “This is a country that had a role in their upheaval, and we strongly believe that the United States has a responsibility to assist them.”

Complete destitution in Jordan?   I understand that Iraqis live fairly well in Jordan, afterall didn’t Angelina Jolie just tell us so recently.   Their situation might be filled with uncertainty for the future, but destitute?   No!   However, the word “uncertainty” doesn’t cut it when you are trying to spin the story to make Americans feel rotten, guilt-ridden and willing to write to Washington for more money for refugee agencies.  “Destitution” is a better choice of words.