Category: Iraqi refugees

Canada is going to double the number of Iraqis it resettles

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The numbers are miniscule compared to the refugees the US takes, so what really interested me in this story is that Canada has a government refugee program and a private sponsorship program.   Note in this MSNBC article that a much larger number of refugees come through the PRIVATE program.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO – Canada will more than double the number of privately sponsored Iraqi refugees it accepts from the Middle East, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has announced.

“Taken together with government-assisted refugees, this means that the number of Iraqi refugees coming to Canada will have more than quadrupled since 2005,” Minister Kenney said while speaking before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

“Last year our government, at the behest of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, committed to increasing by more than 50 percent the number of resettled refugees from the Middle East in response to the Iraqi refugee crisis,” he said. “I am happy to announce further increases. Canada had planned to raise its private sponsorship program levels for Damascus to 1,200 people in 2009. I have instructed my officials to increase that number by an additional 1,300 people. The number of government-assisted refugees will also increase by 230 people.”

Who are these private sponsors and why aren’t we doing that?   It has been our view all along that refugees would fare much better if privately sponsored with private charity.  These numbers indicate that the Canadian government can’t afford too many.

Canada will resettle approximately 2,500 refugees under its private sponsorship program, and 1,400 refugees under the government-assisted refugees program, through its Damascus mission. This represents a fourfold increase over 2005, when approximately 800 refugees were accepted from Iraq.

For a little perspective on the numbers, consider that the US resettled around 60,000 refugees in the last fiscal year, 13,000 were Iraqis.

Each year, 19 countries from around the world resettle about 100,000 refugees. From that number, Canada resettles 10,000 to 12,000 each year from 70 different nationalities, or one out of every ten refugees resettled globally.

Guess that puts the US at six for every ten refugees resettled worldwide.

Previously unhappy Iraqi refugee gets a job…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…. but Mom is going home to Iraq.

We first told you about Firas Taresh, an Iraqi man, who had been resettled on Long Island with his younger brother and mother back in September.   His story about joblessness was among the first we posted on unemployed Iraqis.   This is an update.   He has a job.  From the East Hampton Star:

Next week, the 33-year-old Iraqi refugee, who settled on the South Fork with his family in August, will begin working at Symbion Power, an engineering company in Washington, D.C. Symbion focuses on the transmission and distribution of electricity in the Middle East. Mr. Taresh will be in an administrative job, and sees an opportunity to contribute to the company’s foreign projects, many of which are based in Iraq.

Even before the war he had wanted to come to America.

“I dreamed of coming to the United States all my life, but never as a refugee,” he said. “I thought maybe as an immigrant, as a skilled worker or a student with a scholarship, but as a refugee? I never imagined something like this.”

Catholic Charities wasn’t much help.

Mr. Taresh also never imagined how difficult it would be to find a job. He said he applied to Bechtel more than 50 times, and each time was turned down. Meetings with representatives of Catholic Charities, a local partner of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, did not yield the results he was given to expect, such as cash assistance and food stamps. His younger brother is the only member of the family who has gotten health insurance. “There is no explanation,” he said. “I never imagined I was going to face the difficulties I am facing in this country.”

We continue to be puzzled why many of these Iraqi refugees say they “were given to expect” better living conditions in the US.  Who misled them?

His brother and sister, still in Iraq, say things are improving and so Mom is going home.

His mother, he said, has had a much more difficult time adjusting, and hopes to go home. “Insha’Allah,” she said, or “God willing.” A few weeks ago, Mr. Taresh took his mother to Washington to get her passport renewed.

Iraqi Palestinians blast Arab countries, call them hypocrites

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written in many past posts that the Palestinians are kept as refugees from generation to generation to fuel Arab hatred toward the Jewish people and  to serve as the sore in Israel’s side.    So I am completely stunned to read at the Times this account of Iraqi Palestinian’s anger toward Arab countries and other Muslim groups for not helping them.   These Palestinians trapped in a no-man’s land between Syria and Iraq are speaking out.

Arab solidarity is not a phrase that Salim Ahmad wants to hear any more. On a battered television inside a windblown tent he watches with scepticism as the crowds demonstrate in the streets of Damascus over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“If they really cared anything for Palestinians, they would not leave us here in this terrible place,” he said, gesturing around him. “Don’t tell me about solidarity when nobody cares that we are here at all.”

For the past three years this desolate spot between the Iraqi and Syrian border posts has served as home to hundreds of Palestinians fleeing persecution in Iraq. Favoured by Saddam Hussein as proof of his solidarity with the Palestinian cause, they were among the first targets of vengeful Shia militia after the fall of the regime.

When they tried to flee to Syria, however, they found their paths blocked. While Iraq citizens swanned through the border post Palestinians were turned back, unable to enter Syria but unable to return to Iraq either. Stateless and without passports the Palestinians sat down where they were dumped, in the walled-off layby by the road between the two glowering border posts.

Screw Palestine!

Shiia Muslim Militia men (no doubt displaying that famous Muslim charity toward fellow Muslims) captured some of the Palestinians:

“They shouted screw Palestine, screw Jerusalem,” Mr Abdullah said. “They said, ‘We want to empty Iraq of Palestinians’.”

When the UN wanted to set up more comfortable camps for the displaced Iraqi Palestinians, other fellow Muslims in a Muslim country disallowed it.

The Syrian authorities forbid the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from providing any help that might make the camp more permanent, so the refugees live in tents by the side of the road.

Now for the astounding truth:

Resettling the refugees was not an option then. “Resettlement is a dirty word when it comes to the Palestinians,” Laurens Jolles, the head of the UN refugee mission in Damascus, said. The Palestinian Authority and the governments of Arab states oppose resettlement on grounds of political principle, an abrogation of the right to return to Palestine and an abandonment of hopes of a Palestinian state. “We don’t agree with that,” Mr Jolles said.

Neither do the refugees.”We don’t have a nationality, a passport, a home,” Mr Ahmad said. “We want to be settled. Who are they to tell us what is good for Palestinians? No Arab country wants us so if a European one does then I will go there. It is about our children’s future.”

The government in Gaza is a hypocrite!

“We wanted to end our isolation from the world,” Yunis, one of them said. Another member of the group contacted news organisations when the Gaza protests began, telling them: “The Government are hypocrites. We are Palestinians and they don’t care about us at all.”

Now if only more news organizations would join the Times in telling the truth we would be making major strides in bringing peace to the Middle East. 

Here are some of our previous posts on the plight of the Iraqi Palestinians.

Police called in to keep order as refugees line up for jobs at Tyson’s Food

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here we go.  News just in that police had to be called into the Jobs Center in Shelbyville, TN as a group of 150 refugees jostled in line desperate for jobs with the meatpacker.    The refugees were being brought in from Nashville by volags such as World Relief.

Police were called to Shelbyville’s job center Monday to control a crowd of 150 refugees from Nashville who had been brought to town by various charitable organizations to apply for jobs at Tyson Foods.

Sheriff Randall Boyce said they were called to stop the refugees from cutting line and pushing and shoving. According to Hom Soukaseme, Employment Manager of World Relief, which she described as a Christian non-profit that contracts with the government, she brought them to Shelbyville on Sunday afternoon to wait for the office to open on Monday.

A large number appear to be Iraqis.    So the volags are bringing doctors and engineers to cut meat?

The refugees they serve are from different countries such as Burma, Iraq, Sudan, Thailand and other countries, although the people in line Monday appeared to be Iraqis, Soukaseme said.

So now I’m wondering what happened to the Somali workers that had dominated this plant and town last year?   And, then the even larger question, are there any Americans looking for work in Shelbyville?

Iraqi refugee: “Do they bring us out here to help us or to humiliate us?”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

New city, same old story.  This time we hear that there are no jobs for refugees, especially well-educated Iraqi refugees, in Fredericksburg, VA.

About 100 Iraqis came to Fredericksburg this past year expecting to find “heaven.”

They fled tumultuous situations in the Middle East.

Among the new refugees: A doctor whose husband was killed as the couple took their children to their Baghdad schools; she, too, was shot during the attack. A building contractor forced to negotiate a ransom after insurgents kidnapped his teenage son on the streets of the Iraqi capital. And a businessman who was waiting–a sword pressed against his neck–for his executioner to arrive when American troops found his makeshift prison.

When each learned he would get a new life in America he celebrated, saying he saw it as “paradise” or “heaven.”

Six months later, some wonder if they’d be better off in Baghdad.

[….]

Instead of paradise, these recent newcomers found the brave new world of refugee resettlement in a down economy: few jobs, eviction notices, landlord disputes, high rents and vast cultural differences.

No jobs eventually means no homes.

About 50 Iraqis who arrived in Fredericksburg in August still lack jobs. Seven families recently received eviction notices.

When you read the article notice that some sense is creeping in and the refugee industry is beginning to recognize that something must be done and maybe the flow of refugees needs to be slowed.    Or at least they are going to start talking about it!

Jobs remain scarce everywhere. Refugee coordinators around the country will have a teleconference later this month to come up with strategies.

Be sure to check out the comments which center mostly around two themes:  what about taking care of our own folks first and maybe returning to Iraq is a good idea.

We have written extensively on the issue of Iraqi refugee unemployment and identified 15 states (including Virginia) where Iraqis are not finding work and are unhappy about it.   See the most recent one of those stories from Salt Lake City, Utah and follow links back to other stories.

Also just a reminder that Refugees International is pushing for 100,000 Iraqis this fiscal year and Obama’s good friends at the Center for American Progress are pushing for an airlift of that many also here.    By way of comparison, we brought a meager 13,000 this past fiscal year and can’t find them adequate employment.

I wonder if these Washington DC refugee industry lobbyists ever talk to the resettlement workers around the country?   Strikes me that there is a little disconnect here!

Note to a serious reporter:  With 307 previous posts in our Iraqi Refugee category, we probably have the largest database of news stories on the subject anywhere.