Update:   The Free Lance-Star reporter, Amy Umble, has more information in an excellent blog posting on this story here.

How many times!  How many times have we heard over the last year and a half that Iraqi refugees were desperate to get out of Syria?   How many times did AP reporter Matthew Lee, shilling for the refugee industry, harass the Bush Administration to bring more Iraqis to the US?  Now, these families, after only 6 months in the US, want to go back to the Middle East, to Syria no less!

From the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA, describing the trip to Dulles airport last week:

Shamas Jawad woke up groggily in the back seat of a minivan bound for the airport.

“Are we there yet?” the sleepy 3-year-old asked in Arabic.

Awkward laughter followed. The curly-haired preschooler and her family wouldn’t reach their destination for another 36 hours. And then they could face an additional daylong journey.

When the Jawads arrive in Syria, they may find a cheap place to rent. But the government could instead deny them refuge and offer a police escort back to the Jawads’ native Iraq.

Shamas’ father, Muoafaq Jawad, thinks either option would be better than life in America.

He, his wife and five children arrived in Stafford County on Aug. 27.

[….]

They found poverty, unemployment and homelessness here.

After having had their airfare to the US paid by the American taxpayer, they had to borrow money to get back to Syria.

The Jawads were evicted from their Stafford townhouse March 12 and immediately began begging and borrowing money for airfare for all seven family members. They packed their clothes and left for Syria on Thursday.

Making reference to a story we have heard many times, these refugees were told that life in the US was going to be fabulous and that they would have things taken care of.   WHO IS TELLING THEM THIS, AND WHY?

Unable to find jobs during the recession, the Jawads and another Iraqi refugee family both left Stafford on Thursday.

About 85 Iraqis resettled in the Fredericksburg area last year. Most came through Jordan and Syria where, refugees say, someone promised them jobs and aid once they got to America.

“They told us they would bring us to the United States for a better life,” Jawad said.

But he and other Iraqi refugees in America say they were better off as refugees in Syria and Jordan.

The article wraps up by mentioning that more Iraqis will come this year anyway. Duh! You would think that with all my past posts (community destabilization category) on the Alinsky method, I should have noticed.     I just realized that when I wrote about Eric Schwartz’s outfit this morning, Connect US Fund, which promotes the seemingly illogical idea that inspite of our economic downturn it is still a good time to bring refugees, it never occurred to me that refugees in crisis, like these families, could serve as the catalyst to expand the public welfare part of refugee resettlement—you know, the Emanuel/Obama theme about not wasting a good crisis!   We are seeing that welfare expansion already in Utah!

Please go and read the whole article from Fredericksburg, it is fascinating and the comments alone are well worth the visit.  I guess you could say the common theme was Bye! Bye!  And, that is one of the kinder sentiments.

Yes, once again we have an unhappy Iraqi refugee story, this one from near Cincinnati, Ohio.  

“I’m nervous. Every day I cry,” Al-Sharea ( Rasha Al-Sharea) says.

Sometimes she wonders if her decision to leave the Middle East was too hasty.

She is alone, about to be evicted, and due to have a baby any day.   No wonder she is crying.

I don’t know what is going on.  Her story is about the twentieth such story we have written in recent months.  Ohio is one of 17* states where Iraqi refugees are left in the lurch, jobless and unhappy and often wanting to go home.   The stories are virtually the same, either reporters are lemmings and one such story leads to another or the problem is so pervasive it can’t be ignored.   If the stories were not all so uniformly critical of government contracted resettlement agencies, one might guess they were planted stories to drum up support for more funding for refugees, but I don’t know why these contractors would be willing to expose their failings in caring for these people.

Al-Sharea is a well-educated woman who thought she had won the lottery by being accepted to come to the US as a refugee, and now she is crying every day.   The agency that has apparently let her down is Catholic Charities.

Catholic Charities South Western Ohio bills itself as the top provider of resettlement services for refugees in Greater Cincinnati.

Al-Sharea is one of 411 refugees since 2001 to arrive in the region after being sponsored by the local nonprofit agency.

Few arrivals are from Iraq, said Rod Huber, who heads the office’s refugee resettlement program. Last year brought five or six – including Al-Sharea – although the number of Iraqi refugees nationwide continues to swell.

As of early February, nearly 20,000 Iraqi refugees have resettled in the United States since 2007, according to federal statistics.

Catholic Charities lost track of her.

Catholic Charities in Cincinnati is among dozens of nonprofit agencies across the country with government approval to help refugees resettle in the United States.

Agency workers meet the refugees at the airport. They offer $425 in initial housing assistance, set refugees up with donations of furniture, household goods and clothing and offer job assistance. They hook them up with English classes if needed and help refugees apply for food stamps, cash assistance and Medicaid.

Refugees without children are entitled to eight months of public assistance by law. Benefits can continue if the family has children, Huber said.

Huber said services were offered to Al-Sharea. Then, the agency lost track of her.

Read the whole story about Al-Sharea and her misfortunes that could have been avoided if someone knowledgeable was guiding her through the red-tape maze of the welfare system.

This month, Al-Sharea received a letter from the apartment management saying the rent was habitually late and they wanted Al-Sharea to leave or face eviction.

Huber, of Catholic Charities, said he wasn’t aware of the latest housing flap or Al-Sharea’s problems getting food stamps.

A caseworker helped Al-Sharea obtain food stamps in November. But after that, they thought Malabeh had taken responsibility for her.

“We kind of bowed out at that point for that reason,” Huber said. “We want the family to be involved. We want the family to help them.”

The agency has only so much money, he said.

How much does it cost to follow-up with a phone call every month or so to see how a refugee is doing?   I can see maybe losing track of them after a year or two, but within months!   It would help the refugee not fall through the cracks as Al-Sharea obviously has, but if they have begun treatments for such things as TB (yes, refugees do enter the country with TB), it would protect the public as well to know where they are.

And, aren’t there reports that must be made to the Office of Refugee Resettlement involving employment?  I know there are because here is the site  (this is a pdf file, scroll to your state) at ORR where employment is reported.  So, if Catholic Charities didn’t know within months were Al-Sharea was, how were they able to report her employment, or lack of employment?    Makes you wonder about the accuracy of these reports doesn’t it?

 

*The 17 states where Iraqis have few job prospects and are unhappy include: Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire,Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Connecticut, New Mexico, California, Utah, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont and Washington. See our Iraqi refugee category for all these stories and more.

We’ve written innumerable posts on this topic before but thought it was worth mentioning again, especially as we are always welcoming new readers.   This conversation with Iraqi Ambassador Sumaida’ie  occurred in December so I don’t know why it is being published here in March.   The message is still applicable, perhaps even more so as the Obama Administration seems unable to turn the prospects for our economy around and unemployment rises.

THE NATIONAL Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR) hosted a “Conversation with Iraqi Ambassador Samir Shakir M. Sumaida’ie” on Dec. 16, 2008 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC. NCUSAR director Dr. John Duke Anthony introduced the ambassador who, prior to his Washington, DC appointment in April 2006, had served as Iraq’s permanent Representative to the U.N. since July 2004.

Return and help rebuild Iraq.

Turning to the subject of Iraqi refugees, Ambassador Sumaida’ie said that 2.2 million refugees have poured into Syria and Jordan. In contrast, he noted, in 2008 the U.S. took in only 12,000 Iraqi refugees. The previous week, he had lunch with Iraqi refugees who feel they have been abandoned to their fate in the U.S., and that the established Iraqi American community has left them to their own devices and given them little support. Highly qualified Iraqis must retake exams in order to practice medicine or other professions in this country. Sumaida’ie said he encourages displaced Iraqis to go back home and take part in the rebuilding of Iraq. “A lot of educated people have fled. We need them the most,” he concluded.

We have extensive coverage in our Iraqi refugee category of the situation facing Iraqi displaced people, many of whom are unhappy and not afraid to say so (note some met with the ambassador to complain) as they are unemployed and struggling in the US.