This is one more in a long series of articles we’ve posted about unhappy and unemployed Iraqi refugees in the United States, but what makes this one different is that one woman ventures a hypothesis for why they are here inspite of the lousy conditions and uncertainty in which they are living.

The lead-in to the article from The National, a publication of the UAE, is as follows:

In the last two years, America has belatedly opened its doors to Iraqis seeking refuge and made efforts to resettle them across the country. But the lucky few who make it to the United States find economic catastrophe, few job opportunities and little to no help from the nation that brought them there. Neela Banerjee reports from Phoenix, Arizona.

Umm Ahmed, an Iraqi mother with a ten year old son  had it rough in Iraq, but now spends her days chain-smoking, applying for jobs and worried about the end of her welfare assistance looming on the horizon.

But it is life in America, not the past in Iraq, that troubles Umm Ahmed’s sleep now. She gets government assistance for food and rent. But in a few weeks, her food and rent subsidies as a refugee will end – less than six months after they started. She has not found any work, despite filling out applications all over the city. At one restaurant, she said, the manager joked that she looked like Osama bin Laden’s mother.

Umm Ahmed goes to English classes and writes down new words in a small notebook she always carries, but her English is still rudimentary. None of the Iraqis she knows have found work, she said, and she worries that she and her son will be homeless.

Umm Ahmed talked and smoked for three hours, and by the end, only panic tumbled out. “The reason they are bringing a lot of refugees from Iraq to the US is that they are asking our forgiveness,” she said. “But they make it worse by having us here. There is no support, and people here think everyone from the Middle East is Osama bin Laden. If they can’t offer us help, why did they bring us here?”

Good question!  And, here is an even better question, why are they (resettlement agencies) continuing to press for more and more Iraqis to be resettled in the US?   Note Lavinia Limon of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (one of the top ten government contractors) just yesterday is asking her supporters to lobby Obama for more Iraqis when we are not taking care of what we have.   Look at this letter she wants you to send the President.

Honestly, there is no logic to this business of  bringing more and more refugees into our poor economy, and we have been told time and again that these agencies aren’t doing it for the money.   So, I wondered about this once before —is there some sort of psychological malady at play here?   Is it guilt, as this Iraqi woman suggests, or something else?   In the animal rescue world there is a real psychological disorder called Animal Collector Syndrome, I wonder if there is a comparable syndrome for human beings.  I don’t know why there wouldn’t be.

See also yesterday’s post about Lutheran Immigration Services, another federal contractor, and their worries about the number of refugees they are taking.

…..to the US!   The word has filtered back about the economic situation in the US at a time when life in Iraq is settling down to normal and these Iraqis interviewed by the Los Angeles Times have decided why risk it, why go to America now.

Reporting from Baghdad — Raheem’s cellphone rang as we walked through a crowded market, stepping over piles of trash and weaving around slow-moving donkey carts.

He spoke to the caller in his usual low murmur, then hung up. It was a U.S. immigration official, he told me. His application for refugee status in America had been approved. The flight was nine days away. “What do you think?” he asked, as calmly as if inviting my opinion on a new shirt.

Raheem, who speaks English with poetic fluency and carries himself with the dignity of an Ivy League lecturer, already knew he would not go.

In Iraq, he owns property and has a job, and his son has a promising career in computer technology. Bombs, of course, still go off and gunfire still crackles in the streets. Neighborhood gossip is of sectarian killings and kidnappings. But the epidemic of bloodshed seems a thing of the past.

The local news, meanwhile, reports on America’s economic woes, of foreclosed homes being auctioned off for a pittance. Word filters back from Iraqis in the U.S. who are unable to find work, struggling to afford medical care, and devouring savings that once seemed everlasting.

“It used to be that going to America was a dream. No more,” said Raheem, 56, a former teacher and experienced reporter who is one of the local cast of journalists, interpreters, drivers, guards, technicians and general fix-it men and women who have kept The Times running here since the war began.

If these don’t sound like refugees to you, they aren’t, but they are eligible to enter the US as refugees thanks to the bill Senator (send them to Hyannisport) Kennedy snuck into a defense appropriation bill in late 2007.

Raheem and I have had countless conversations on this topic since last summer, after the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act made it possible for Iraqis who worked for U.S.-based media, aid agencies and the U.S. government and its contractors to receive special consideration as refugees.

Read the whole article about other Iraqis who have made the same decision as Raheem.   In fact, it sounds like things are better in Iraq then they are for the unemployed and unhappy refugees we have plunked down in 17  US states.

Even with unemployment in Iraq officially at 18% — far higher than in America — Iraqis are eligible for monthly food rations no matter what their income. In a society where bank loans and credit cards are virtually unheard of, most people own their homes outright. And many Iraqis are flush with cash after years of having little to spend money on.

As Iraqis’ earnings grew, the violence around them continued a steady drip downward.

Looks like all you resettlement folks can now focus on taking care of the truly persecuted Christian Iraqi refugees.  

 For everything you need to know about Iraqi refugees, see our previous 335 posts on the topic here.