Category: Iraqi refugees

Iraqi government helping finance unhappy refugees return to Iraq (from the US!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story, this time from USA Today, about Iraqi refugees hearing that life is tough in the US and having second thoughts about coming,

BAGHDAD — When Haider Abbas applied for a refugee visa to the U.S. more than a year ago, moving to America seemed like a no-brainer.

An American contractor for whom Abbas had worked in Baghdad early in the war told him he could get him a job at his Northern Virginia company. And Abbas’ younger brother, who was among the first to win the special refugee visas being allotted to Iraqis, was already on his way to the United States.

Then, earlier this year, the U.S. economy soured. Abbas’ former boss told him he probably couldn’t help him find work after all. The younger brother, an engineer by training, could find work in America only as a pizza delivery man.

Now, Abbas is uncertain whether he should stay or go.

“This is something I have wanted for such a long time, but now with the U.S. economy the way it is, I worry how I’ll be able to find a job and care for my family,” said Abbas, 37, who recently was informed that his visa was approved. “I feel very confused.”

There are signs that Iraqis who win refugee visas are increasingly having second thoughts about moving to America.

Then here is the bit in this article that we didn’t know, and I bet most Iraqis in the US don’t know—-the Iraqi government is helping Iraqis go home!

Lina Omar, a foreign service officer in the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, also said that some Iraqis are reconsidering their options in light of improved security in Iraq.

“Many families are hearing from those who have already arrived that the financial support they are going to receive is for a very limited period of time, and that making ends meet will be difficult,” Omar said.

A few have become so discouraged that they’ve given up on the U.S. altogether. Omar said the Iraqi government is helping several Iraqi refugee families, who said they can’t make it financially, return to Iraq.

Another unhappy Iraqi refugee, Ft. Worth this time

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I have a slew of Iraqi refugee stories today; I hope I can get them all posted.  Here is the first, same old story!   Iraqi refugee, a single man, misses his family and is considering returning to Iraq.  From the Star-Telegram:

FORT WORTH — He arrived 2 1/2 weeks ago, with a heavy suitcase and years of pent-up hopes and dreams.

Faced with imminent danger in his homeland of Iraq, 39-year-old Hussein Khalifa was finally in the United States — in Fort Worth — seeking refuge in a country where one of his friends said “this is the life.”

Now he’s wondering whether danger really is the worst thing he could face.

Loneliness has set in on the man accustomed to working two jobs and spending much time with his 4-year-old nephew.

He has been forced into a slower pace as he waits for a Social Security card and legal documents that will let him formally begin a job search. So he spends time talking with other Iraqi refugees, looking through old pictures, sending e-mails to family and talking on the telephone with his nephew, who wants him to come home.

“I’m frustrated,” said Khalifa, an English teacher, interpreter and special correspondent for news organizations in Baghdad. “At home, I have everything I want — a home, money, family. But … I can’t guarantee my life.

“In this country, I have my life but nothing else.”

Texas is one of the few states in the nation where employment numbers are still good, but not good enough for a refugee who speaks English well.

So difficult [the transition to America] for Khalifa that he has set a personal deadline: Find a job by September, when an Iraqi school holiday ends, or go back to Iraq.

“Maybe I was wrong about my dream,” Khalifa said. “Maybe this was a terrible mistake.”

You can bet the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has fully informed him of the consequences should he return to Iraq.  Each of these returnees is a black-eye to the do-gooders (we want to show you what good people we  Americans are) in the State Department, but even more so to the federal contractors (see the Top Ten here) whose responsibility it is to help them adjust to their new lives, make them comfortable and help them find work.    ‘Hey buddy, you leave and you can’t come back and besides we want our airfare money we loaned you!’

Khalifa said he would return to Iraq before his money runs out.

But if he goes back, he will no longer be considered a refugee and can’t come back to the United States, Amara said. Either way, he has to repay the International Organization for Migration for his trip costs.

Note to Khalifa:  Check with your embassy in Washington, DC.  Apparently the Iraqi government is paying airfares home!   See this post.

It is confirmed: 1350 Iraqi Palestinians coming to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 30th:  More here at Forbes magazine.

Update July 17th:  The Wall Street Journal has more information on the story, here.

Update July 11th:  American Thinker had an opinion piece on the Iraqi Palestinian refugees yesterday with a lot of interesting comments posted as well, here.

Update later on July 10th:   Advocates for open borders (people who have apparently no concern with the numbers or where immigrants come from), call Mark Krikorian a “nativist” and “racist” for his comments in this Christian Science Monitor story,  once again demonstrating that they, none of them apparently, can have a discussion/disagreement on immigration without demonizing anyone who disagrees with them.  That is classic Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals.”   See the aptly named “Wonk Room” Progressive blog here to see what I’m talking about.

It continues to amaze me that these commenters (calling Krikorian a nativist) can’t see that the refugees we bring here are virtually turned over to big businesses in order to keep wages low.   They are largely being exploited, and at times live in terrible conditions here when government resettlement contractors leave them in a lurch.  I bet in the last two years we have nearly a hundred posts about refugees living in the US in squalid conditions, and we have written extensively about Iraqi refugees returning home to Iraq or the Middle East where they are culturally comfortable after being here for a few months.  So it’s not so easy to tell who are the good guys, as the Progressives would have you believe, in this discussion and who are the bad guys.  Are the open borders folks really the good guys they like to portray themselves to be? 

More information from Jerry Gordon writing at  New English Review yesterday, here.

 Original post starts here:

It really is no surprise to hear, we have reported on many occasions* about the lobbying/public relations effort that groups like Refugees International**  have been waging ,  that it has been confirmed by the US State Department—-Palestinians, who were in Iraq at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, would be coming to the US.   About ten days ago we speculated that this might be in the works, here.

From the Christian Science Monitor (hat tip: three of our readers!):

Atlanta – The State Department confirmed today that as many as 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians – once the well-treated guests of Saddam Hussein and now at outs with much of Iraqi society – will be resettled in the US, mostly in southern California, starting this fall.

It will be the largest-ever resettlement of Palestinian refugees into the US – and welcome news to the Palestinians who fled to Iraq after 1948 but who have had a tough time since Mr. Hussein was deposed in 2003. Targeted by Iraqi Shiites, the mostly-Sunni Palestinians have spent recent years in one of the region’s roughest refugee camps, Al Waleed, near Iraq’s border with Syria.

“Really for the first time, the United States is recognizing a Palestinian refugee population that could be admitted to the US as part of a resettlement program,” says Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch in Washington.

Given the US’s past reluctance to resettle Palestinians – it accepted just seven Palestinians in 2007 and nine in 2008 – the effort could ruffle some diplomatic feathers.

I must say, if the State Department is sending them to California, they must be in on bringing down the economy of arguably the most financially-beleaguered state in the US.   Maybe the Obama/Clinton State Department is following the Cloward-Piven principle on how one brings down a government by overwhelming the welfare system!  (To learn more about the Cloward-Piven strategy start with Judy’s post, here. To those of us who cannot understand the idiocy of  the Left’s drive to import more poverty, it is the explanation!)

Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies charged that the State Department is dropping off its problems in a town near you, and not necessarily a California town.

But some critics say the State Department is sloughing off its problems onto American cities, especially since in this case the Palestinians were sympathizers of Hussein, who was deposed by the US.

“This is politically a real hot potato,” says Mark Krikorian, director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, adding, “[A]merica has become a dumping ground for the State Department’s problems – they’re tossing their problems over their head into Harrisburg, Pa., or Omaha, Neb.”

To further illuminate Mr. Krikorian’s point, why didn’t the UNHCR and the US State Department put pressure on rich Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to take their Muslim brethren?  To their credit these camp-dwelling Palestinians caught at the Iraq-Syria border themselves called their co-religionists in Arab-run countries hypocrites for not taking them in—where is the much ballyhooed Muslim charity?  We know why they don’t take them—Islamists must keep the refugee thorn in the side of the Israeli government.  They must keep the hate going.

And, by the way, these Palestinians will come to the US in the Iraqi refugee quota, so besides residents of the resettlement cities not really knowing who their neighbors are, presumably they will take 1350 places from possibly Christian or other minority refugees from Iraq.   I hope the State Department at least takes care not to resettle them in the midst of Shia Muslims in your town, thus bringing the problems of the Middle East closer to home.

While the US generally doesn’t accept Palestinians, Todd Pierce, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, says that the Iraqi population of Palestinians falls under a different category from those in Gaza and the West Bank. Each applicant will be carefully scrutinized for terrorist ties, he adds.

The US reluctance to accept Palestinians is because it “doesn’t want the refugee program to become an issue in its relationship with Israel,” says a diplomat in the region, who requested anonymity because he is not cleared to talk to the press. But these Palestinians, he says, will be processed as refugees from Iraq.

Mr. Krikorian says the US should be the last refuge for those fleeing persecution. Only Jordan of all the Arab countries routinely grants citizenship to Palestinian refugees, he notes. More recently, says Mr. Frelick, Jordan has also shut its borders to Palestinians coming from Iraq.

* For those readers wanting to know more, I just used our search function for ‘Iraqi Palestinians’ and realized we have mentioned this group of refugees in nearly 40 posts.

** Review these posts to start with on Refugees International, the lobbying arm of the refugee industry.  Here I point out the lobbying campaign of RI for the Palestinians but no mention of the persecuted Christians.  Then in this post I told you that RI Chairman of the Board, Farooq Kathwari, has been criticized for his alleged connection to radical Islamists.

Utah National Guard seeking to help Iraqis settle in, many still leave

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, some members of the Utah National Guard are getting together with Iraqi refugees to help them settle into life in Utah.   I was surprised to see the large number of refugees that have already returned to the Middle East disgusted with life in America,  however, some plan to stick it out here especially as more violence is predicted.

But others have concluded that there is no future for them here. Since arriving in Utah, more than a dozen Iraqis — disappointed by the support system they found in America and often struggling to find work in a bad economy — have returned to their war-torn nation or other countries in the Middle East.

Refugees reported that they anticipate stepped up violence in their homeland as Obama pulls troops out of Iraq.

While Iraq is significantly less violent right now than it was at the time that many of the refugees left, some believe that Tuesday’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities — and a full withdrawal planned for 2010 — will spark a new round of sectarian fighting, including the tit-for-tat murder sprees that marred the nation from 2005 to 2007.

“People are going to start fighting again,” said Niaz Rashid, who arrived in Utah last month. “It is certain.”

Off topic, but I’ve wondered if when Obama pulls us out and if violence returns will Obama be blamed for losing Iraq?  Just wondering.  And, if refugee numbers increase will they be Obama’s refugees?

Iraqi Palestinians set to arrive in the US: when and how many?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From time to time I’ve written about the Palestinians who originally went to Iraq at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, but when Saddam met his end, they became targets of Iraqis who hated Saddam.   So they fled, but no Muslim country would take them and they live in camps along the Iraq-Syria border.   A few have gone to Chile and Iceland, other places in Europe too.

These Palestinians have not been shy in speaking out about the hypocrisy of the Arab world—the mythical Muslim charity has not been offered to them.   And, by the way, the reason Palestinian “refugees” continue to live in Gaza after decades is that no Muslim country wants them either.  Those countries need the refugee hammer (sword!) over Israel.

Well, now it appears thousands of Iraqi Palestinians will come to the US.  Exactly how many and when seems to be up in the air.   Or better still, it probably isn’t up in the air as far as the State Department goes, it’s just that we don’t know.   Note this comment thread on the post I wrote the other day about Palestinians going  to Canada.

Kristen:

the US will also be taking 5000 of these Palestinians this Fiscal Year, i think they are scheduled to start coming in July.

Me:

Kristen, are you speculating that we are taking 5000, or do you know something we don’t know yet! 

Timisoara:

Kristen, as far as I know, the US will also be taking about 1200 (not 5000) of these Palestinians, and most will arrive in the next US government fiscal year (e.g. in the Fall). They’re coming from the Al Waleed refugee camp, near the Iraq-Syrian border. There are discussions about accepting Palestinians from the Al Tanaf and Al Hol refugee camps, but both camps have problems with access, and they’re fewer than 500 individuals each.

Kristen:

Sorry for the late response. Until Friday, I was working for an affiliate of ECDC [Ethiopian Community Development Council, one of the Top Ten government contractors], and we had started to receive assurance forms for a few of these Palestinian cases. According to ECDC, the US will be taking 5,000 of these cases on an “emergency” basis before this fiscal year ends. I am not working there, but that was the last that I had heard.

The US doesn’t normally take Palestinians.  We  have taken less than a dozen Palestinians in FY2008 and about the same number this fiscal year so far.  I wonder if the Iraqi Palestinians will be listed as Palestinians or hidden in the Iraqi refugee data?

Searching around just now to see if I could find any confirmation of what our commenters are saying, I did find this at Relief Web:

The Iraqi Palestinian population is fairly small – only a few thousand. So far the U.S. has not taken in any of the refugees from Al-Tanf. To its credit, it has agreed to take in many of the Palestinian Iraqis staying in Al-Waleed camp, another of the three similar border camps. But the US can do more.

Wonder when the mainstream media will notice this story, probably only when they are moving in next door.