Category: Iraqi refugees

Canada to take Iraqi Palestinians no Muslim country will take

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on several occasions that Iraqi Palestinians, not wanted in Iraq because they were originally there as guests of Saddam Hussein, were refused entry into Syria and have been living in camps at the Iraq-Syria border.  A few have gone to Iceland and Chile for resettlement.   Now comes word that several hundred are going to Canada.

Some of the 336 Palestinian refugees stranded in an isolated refugee camp on the Iraq-Syria border will soon have new homes in Canada.

Through its private sponsorship program the Canadian government is making it possible for churches and other private sponsors to sponsor some of the residents living in the Al Hol refugee camp, one of three make-shift refugee camps along the border between Syria and Iraq, said Gloria Nafziger of Amnesty International-Canada.

Nafziger represented the Canadian Council for Refugees on a visit to the three camps in November 2008 and highlighted the need for immediate action during a speaking tour hosted by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) refugee programs in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Colombia.

[….]

About 3,000 Palestinian refugees are trapped in the border camps, said Nafziger during her Manitoba visit. They fled killings, kidnappings, torture and death threats in Iraq, but unlike other Iraqi refugees they do not have Iraqi citizenship and are not allowed to enter Syria to seek asylum.

These are the same Palestinian refugees I told you about here.  They called their Arab brothers hypocrites for not accepting them in Muslim countries.

Canada has private refugee resettlement—something I have been advocating in the US.  Presumably those sponsoring refugees are completely responsible for them until they are established in the country.

Canada is the only country in the world that has a private sponsorship program to assist the government in resettlement of refugees and displaced people, said Wiebe.

Each year, the Canadian government resettles approximately 7,500 refugees through government programs and an additional 3,500 through private sponsorships. Mennonite churches in Canada, through MCC, have helped more than 50,000 refugees resettle in Canada under this private sponsorship program.

Add Chad to the list of countries sending refugees to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A new and fairly large group of refugees from the central African country of Chad will soon begin arriving in the US.  Incidentally according to the US State Department, Chad would not be a top tourist destination (see travel warning here).

This new group of refugees will be resettled in Kentucky, Texas, Iowa and Utah, according to AlertNet here.

N’DJAMENA, Chad, June 23 – The UN refugee agency has begun a pilot programme to resettle 1,800 refugees in Chad to the United States, with a first group of 11 from several countries flying out of N’Djamena at the weekend.

The group that left on Sunday included seven urban refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), three urban Sudanese refugees and one person from the Central African Republic (CAR) who had been living in Dosseye camp in southern Chad. They will fly to New York and later be resettled in the states of Kentucky, Texas, Iowa and Utah.

UNHCR plans to identify a total 1,800 cases for possible resettlement in the United States this year. 

[….]

The United States is the first country to agree to resettle vulnerable refugees from Chad.

I just checked my stats and in 2008 we took 23 refugees from Chad and this year through April none had arrived so far

Look who is preparing the refugees for life in America!

Besides the information about the new refugees this article had a bit of information about the process that readers often wonder about.  It’s the UN that identifies likely prospects for us.  Then, check this out:

It is a meticulous process that usually takes 7-9 months per case. Potential resettlement cases are identified by UNHCR protection officers in the field and the refugees undergo several interviews. The International Organization for Migration conducts medical screening and the International Rescue Committee runs orientation programmes to prepare the refugees for life in their new homes.

Don’t tell me it’s the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that supposedly prepared the Iraqis for life in America.   If anyone can confirm it is the IRC we would really like to know because uniformly the Iraqis are reporting they were told their lives would be like heaven here!    If you are new to Refugee Resettlement Watch, check our Iraqi refugee category to see at least 20 posts in which disappointed Iraqis complain that their live’s here aren’t what they expected.

Iraqi government appeals to its scientists to return

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But many don’t feel it’s safe enough yet.   From Reuters:

BAGHDAD – Iraq appealed on Monday for scientists living abroad to return home and use their expertise to help rebuild their homeland’s economy after years of war.

For decades Iraq boasted one of the most highly educated populations in the Middle East, and the government spent large amounts of its oil wealth to train its brightest individuals, sending many overseas to study at prestigious universities.

In the meantime we see Iraqis arriving in the US only to live in poverty, apparently pressured into coming here by the government contractors who make their living off refugees.

Wouldn’t it make more sense and cost us much less, if Iraq’s educated professionals were cared for in the region and kept safe until they could return to Iraq.   We could share the cost with the Iraqi government and it would be a win-win situation all around.

Refugee industry converging in Michigan for conference

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The reason for the conference slated to begin at Michigan State University tomorrow is to bring together lots of levels of the refugee industry to discuss how to get refugees working; and in the case cited, recertified to work in certain professions in the US.

However, I’m wondering if the PR people couldn’t have found a better example of a suffering refugee.  The Associated Press story begins with Salah Hashem’s case:

DETROIT – When Salah Hashem slipped out of Iraq and into Turkey in 2006, he carried with him a host of papers, diplomas and official documents proving he had graduated from Baghdad University and had completed his medical residency.

When he arrived in the Worcester, Mass., area a year later, he put those papers to work, beginning a process of professional recertification in an attempt to resume his career in medicine.

But it was not to be.

The organization charged with validating foreign medical credentials told Hashem the name on his diploma wasn’t his.

The story sounds a tad bit shaky to me, but apparently not to the reporter who launches into this next paragraph without skipping a beat:

A stagnant economy, bureaucratic hurdles and difficulty adapting to a new professional scene are presenting refugees like Hashem and the organizations that serve them with a thorny problem: How to get highly skilled refugees in the U.S. back into their professional field.

Well, I guess you might call a name that doesn’t match on a medical document a bureaucratic hurdle, but it sounds to me that Mr. Hashem’s problems go beyond a stagnant economy and too much bureaucracy.  But, here is how it is all explained away.

In Hashem’s case, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates raised questions stemming from an Iraqi custom — adding the names of several generations of one’s forefathers on formal documents.

“They rejected my application at that time. They said, `We need a paper from your medical school saying that you are a graduate,”‘ Hashem said. [Very reasonable request wouldn’t you say!]   Iraqi universities “make it difficult to get you your papers if you are in a foreign country. They don’t really want to help anybody that fled the country.”

The commission’s associate vice president of operations, Bill Kelly, said while the group is sensitive to cultural differences, the burden is on the candidate to prove the diploma is his or her own.   [Does that sound like too much bureaucracy to you? Sounds like the right kind of bureaucracy to me!]

“We have a responsibility to ensure that the diploma that someone gives us belongs to them. We tell them, ‘We need official legal documentation that both the names belong to you,”‘ said Kelly. “It may inconvenience them some but our feeling is that the integrity of our process must be protected.”  [Your integrity and the health of Mr. Hashem’s future patients!]

He barely failed!  When is the last time you heard that phrase.  We are accustomed to hearing “barely passed,” but “barely failed?’  

After retrieving the papers, Hashem registered for the first of four licensing exams. He barely failed his first attempt. Now, his brother has fled Baghdad after threats on his life and is unable to get the documentation a second time.

Barely failed!   Maybe more paperwork isn’t necessary afterall.

Another refugee family would like to go home to Iraq

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Christian Science Monitor this week also wrote about the International Rescue Committee’s report that I said was a ploy to get more taxpayer money into the resettlement agencies here.    But, it wasn’t your usual politically correct version of the story—the reporter quotes us!    I’ll let you go and see for yourselves what he says.

How about this idea—a return airfare fund!

What I really wanted to mention is that the Christian Science Monitor reporter quotes one more family that is longing to return to Iraq.  How about a fund paid by the Top Ten (Volag) Government Contractors out of their own money, or money from the Tides Foundation for airfare and a little start-up money to return unhappy Iraqis to the life and culture they are comfortable with in the Middle East?

Yasmin and Othman left Iraq last fall to start a new life in Lynn, Mass. Like many refugees, they had imagined a new life – a good one – for themselves and their four children. But now they live on state assistance and food stamps.

The family’s small, three-bedroom apartment is dingy, despite their attempts to scrub it. On a bookshelf, photographs of the family in their garden in Iraq remind them of better days.

Othman was twice offered a job as a packer at a bread company, IRC officials say, but he rejected it because he wanted to work as a welder. Othman insists that the packer job wouldn’t pay enough to support his family, and he wants to work in his field.

“We came here because we had no safety or security because of the US war in Iraq,” Yasmin says. “But we didn’t think people were allowed to live like this in America…. If we could go back to Iraq, we would.”

Readers should see these unhappy Iraqis as an indictment of the kind of care they are receiving from wealthy agencies like the IRC.