Category: Iraqi refugees

Comment worth noting: Refugee agency neglect

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a comment received last night from reader Mark.  We have heard this story over and over again.  Many of  the volags (federal taxpayer-funded contractors) are not taking care of the refugees in their charge and indeed are often not fulfilling their contracts with the government which require they provide refugees with adequate clothing among other things.

I met an Iraqi refugee couple today and I’m glad they were allowed to come here because the wife worked as an English teacher and was threatened for supporting foreigners. The family however was not given any clothes by their resettlement agency other than some jackets. She showed me the jacket she was given and it doesn’t fit her. We are in a very cold state and these people have no winter coats, no hats, no gloves, no scarves, and no boots. She was lucky to find a job that starts next week, but she has to take a bus and walk 5 blocks each way. She said she has already fallen down twice on the ice. I told her to call her refugee resettlement agency caseworker, but she said the caseworker doesn’t return messages. Tomorrow the windchill factor will be negative 20-30.

How many of you reading this know how easy it is to find second hand winter clothing?  I bet you have many extra winter jackets in your own closets.  If this family had a church or other group sponsoring them, just them, they would have their needs met.   These volags often even discourage such sponsorship as we saw in Waterbury, CT last year.

Now this is a story from New Paltz, NY that helps make my point.  Read it here.  There is no mention of a refugee agency involved.  This Iraqi family will probably make it because they have two American families who have taken them under their wings.

For new readers:  You might want to visit a post I wrote in January—Refugees 101—where we call for a complaints hot line for refugees like the one mentioned by Mark.

Add Texas (Texas!) to the list of states where Iraqis are not finding work

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I just last night told you again that Refugees International is still pushing for us to resettle 105,500 Iraqi refugees in the US this fiscal year!  Now, here comes news that Texas has become state number 16 in our list of states* with unhappy Iraqi refugees (that we know of!).  We thought Texas was one of the few US states not in dire economic circumstances yet.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Rand Hikmat-Mahmood, an Iraqi refugee who arrived in Houston with her husband and 13-year-old son five months ago, is weighing one of the most difficult decisions of her life.

She is considering packing up her family and returning to Iraq.

“The economic situation is very difficult here,” she said. “We cannot find jobs.”

It’s getting worse.   And, the State Department and Office of Refugee Resettlement consider Houston a “preferred community.”

Refugees from across the globe are discovering a difficult economic reality in much of America, including Houston, according to multiple resettlement organizations. Caseworkers in Houston are dealing with a major influx of refugees while faced with a smaller pool of available jobs for them.

“We are feeling the consequences of the downturn in the economy, like everyone else is,” said Oleg Jolick, refugee resettlement director for the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. “The trend is worsening.”

Refugees keep coming.

While the economy is declining, the number of refugees is increasing. The Houston area is considered a major destination for refugees in large part because of the availability of jobs, affordable housing and the warm climate.

Catholic Charities expects to resettle 700 refugees and Cuban parolees this year, up from 600 last year. YMCA International Services has already resettled about 200 refugees since the start of the fiscal year in October, compared with 187 in all of last year. The organization estimates it may settle 600 this year.

This (below) is such a crock.  It is not always a choice between living on welfare in the US or dying!  Obviously this Iraqi woman, the subject of this article, is not fearful of dying if she returns to Iraq.  She and her also well-educated husband should be cared for in the region, if not in Iraq, by the Iraqi government so that they will be able to help Iraq re-build when the time comes.

This is how these government contractors, like Catholic Charities, sell refugee resettlement to the public by offering up this false choice.

While some critics have questioned why the State Department continues to settle refugees in tough economic times, refugee organizations said the U.S. government cannot turn away people fleeing persecution.

“Refugee resettlement is a humanitarian effort of the government, and the role is first-and-foremost to protect people’s lives and take them from the situation where their life is in danger to where their life is not in danger anymore,” Jolick said. “Even with all of these problems, even with all of this economy and all of this uncertainty, they’re still better off here than they were where they were.”

The reality is that Jolick would be on the unemployment rolls himself if the State Department spigot was turned off for awhile due to our economic woes.   Don’t let them fool you, the flow could be slowed.  The numbers were dramatically cut immediately following 9/11, they could be cut again.

Indeed the refugee program will be seriously damaged in the eyes of the public if tent cities begin to spring up around US cities as was mentioned in Boise, ID recently.

Reforms needed:

One final thought, I bet this family doesn’t have its own sponsor, a church or other such group that is looking out for them.  Some of these families’ transitions might not be so challenging if we went back to that system of resettlement.

* Texas becomes state number 16 in our parade of states with no jobs and unhappy Iraqi refugees. The 15 others are: Arizona, Maryland, New Hampshire,Virginia, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Connecticut, New Mexico, California, Utah, North Carolina and Washington. See our Iraqi refugee category for all these stories and more.

Refugees International comes to its senses, or not

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When I first read this article, by Ken Bacon at the Huffington Post I thought wow! Refugees International was being sensible in saying that there are too many Iraqi refugees for them to be resettled in third countries and that our government needed to work with the Iraqi government to smooth the way home for displaced Iraqis.   

Incidentally, they never tell you that some Iraqis have been displaced in the region since Saddam Hussein’s brutality scared them out of Iraq before we arrived in 2003.

Increasingly, refugees, who generally can’t work legally in their host countries, are running out of resources. The number of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt is simply too large for these countries to absorb. The population is also too large to resettle into third countries. Therefore, the only real, long-term solution to the Iraqi displacement problem is return to Iraq. Finding ways to create conditions for safe return is central to improving stability in Iraq and in the Middle East.

So far so good.   Bacon also said they will be making a trip to the region next month to assess the situation.  

[An aside:  RI has a PR firm that sent me this press statement with a Youtube clip of one of their young workers interviewing an Iraqi refugee in Syria (second clip on the page).   I was shocked at the cultural insensitivity this woman demonstrated with her immodest dress in a conservative Muslim country.  Remember the famous Nancy Pelosi in Syria head covering pic?    Even in third world countries that are not Islamic it is not considered appropriate to put all one’s assets on public display.]

Next month Refugees International will launch its 10th mission [Edit. with cleavage and arms covered?]  to assess the conditions of displaced Iraqis. The focus of this trip will be on ways to create conditions for speedier return, specifically how the US, the UN and the government of Iraq can work more productively together to resolve the security, humanitarian and legal problems that are preventing Iraqis from returning home.

So, I’m reading this and saying, good for you RI!   We have a terrible economic situation developing in the US and already Iraqi refugees in 15 states are saying they have no work and some are wishing to go home to Iraq.  Helping them return to Iraq sounds like a very sensible plan.

Then here comes the comprehensive program published in 2008:

Refugees International has been promoting a comprehensive program for dealing with Iraqi displacement since last summer. Recognizing that it will take some time to create conditions for safe return, the program calls for increased resettlement of vulnerable Iraqis in the U.S., more help for Jordan, Syria and other countries hosting Iraqi refugees, and a stepped-up effort to ensure voluntary return to Iraq.

Follow that link for the comprehensive program and what do you find!   As we reported awhile back, they want to bring 105,500 Iraqis to the United States THIS YEAR!   I had wondered how they came up with that astronomical number, remember we resettled 13,000 this past year and most of those can’t find jobs.  It was only a few days ago when officials in Boise were freaking at the prospect of tent cities of unemployed refugees.

Here is the breakdown:

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 88,000 Iraqi refugees need immediate protection through resettlement next year. The U.S. generally resettles 50% of all refugees resettled in the world each year, bringing in the U.S. share for 2009 to: 44,000

Palestinian refugees living in desperate conditions on the Iraqi – Syrian border need immediate protection through resettlement: 3,000

The most recently available figures show that the State Department is currently processing 7,000 petitions to bring families averaging three people each to the U.S. to join with Iraqis who have already resettled in the U.S: 21,000

The Refugee Crisis in Iraq calls for admitting refugees who were persecuted due to their affiliations with the U.S. Government and other U.S. based organizations. Many of these refugees have left or are in the process of leaving the country and face an urgent need of assistance and protection as their resources run out. The U.S. should immediately resettle annually: 37,500

Obama picks open-borders advocate for senior position at Homeland Security

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not unexpectedly President Obama has chosen a longtime advocate for bringing more immigrants to the US for a deputy assistant secretary at Homeland Security.  

According to the Colorado Independent:

Esther Olavarria, a Senior Fellow and Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, is Obama’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of homeland security for policy.

Olavarria, in particular, signals a major change for DHS.

Not only does she come from the progressive CAP, but she spent almost 10 years as counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees. Her work there included proposals on comprehensive immigration reform. Olavarria started her career as an immigrants’ advocate when she was a managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center; she has also been directing attorney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Pro Bono Project and staff attorney at the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.

Left out of this report is that she also previously worked for the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees).

Regular readers will remember that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is infamous for recently suggesting we airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US this year.   Because of her position at CAP’s Olavarria must have been behind that scheme.

Palestinians as refugees to the US?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh gosh!    This issue doesn’t seem to go away.   Regular readers know that a rumor got started some weeks back about Obama’s use of ERMA funds ($20 million) for Gaza relief.   The rumor, in a nutshell, is that the money was for transporting a 100,000 Palestinians to the US.   I first reported on the ERMA funds here, and Judy did an excellent job of tracking the full story down here.   For more on ERMA generally, go here and scroll down the table of contents.

There are no plans at this time to bring thousands of Palestinian “refugees” to the US.  As a matter of fact, as Judy has pointed out here and here, the reason that 50 years later the Palestinians are kept as refugees is to fuel the never-ending Arab hatred toward Israel.  The Arab countries could have long ago brought peace to the Middle East by absorbing their fellow Arabs, the Palestinians.   They don’t want to, and if we started moving Palestinians in large numbers to the West, they would scream bloody murder.

However, I wouldn’t stake my reputation on what the Obama Administration might try to do.  We could read tomorrow that they are going to do that and I would have to eat my words!

That said, there are a few Palestinians getting into the US.   We have not taken Palestinians in the refugee program prior to 2008.  However, 9 Palestinians are in the database (unpublished) for Refugee Admissions for 2008.   That is out of over 60,000 refugees resettled from around the world.

Also, in a very curious situation that I reported on January 15th of this year, we were bringing Palestinians to the US presumably for a short period of time during the latest war there.  These Palestinians are babies and children who are US citizens!  Their parents are not, and CAIR is helping them.   I speculated that these children may have somehow been born in the US and are thus so-called ‘anchor babies’   So this is something to keep a close eye on.

In a case where we could potentially bring Palestinians to the US, the Palestinians have been living in Iraq and are now in camps along the Iraq/Syria border.   There is quite a lobbying campaign going on to resettle them in the West.  A recent report on this group is here.   Notice that they are speaking the truth and condemning Arab countries for not helping them and keeping them and all Palestinians in limbo.

That’s all I know of, so far.  But, I wanted to be sure our readers knew there are some  Palestinians (a small number) coming as refugees and there is a potential for those Iraqi Palestinians I mentioned to be resettled here, they number in the hundreds, at most a thousand or two.