Category: Iraqi refugees

Thousands of Iraqi refugees headed to Florida

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the title of a story on Tampabay.com a news source affiliated with the St. Petersburg Times.    However, since some of the other numbers in the article are wrong, I’m guessing “thousands”  of Iraqis will not be coming to Florida real soon.  I’ll get to that in a bit. 

Here is how the article begins:

MIAMI — Iraqis displaced by the ongoing U.S-led war are among new groups of refugees who will increasingly be resettled in communities throughout Florida and the country, a United Nations official said Wednesday.

The United Nations has referred more than 42,000 Iraqis to be resettled in the United States, and of those, 15,000 already have arrived — many of them religious minorities or single mothers whose husbands were killed, said Larry Yungk, senior resettlement officer with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Yungk spoke before more than 200 case workers, educators and social service providers for refugees during a conference called “Adapting to a Changing World: Promising Practices in the Acculturation Process for Refugees.” The one-day conference was being held at Florida International University.

Most of the article is about mental health problems of refugees and this outfit called the Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services.

The conference was sponsored by the Florida Department of Children and Families Refugee Services and Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services.

Gulf Coast is a Clearwater nonprofit agency with programs in 32 Florida counties, treating 50,000 clients a year, specializing in mental health, elder, employment and children’s services, in addition to refugee resettlement. Gulf Coast partners with Harvard University to provided training to mental health experts in 20 states on recovery from torture.

Gulf Coast is another of those non-profit groups that is heavily funded by the taxpayer.  In 2007 its Form 990 showed income of around $28 million with $15 million coming from various government grants.

Back to the article, here is where they got carried away with themselves, or the reporter misunderstood:

Florida resettles between 25,000 to 28,000 refugees a year — three times more than any other state. The majority are resettled in South Florida, while Tampa Bay is the second largest area for resettlement, state officials said.

There is no way on earth that Florida resettles that many refugees a year!  Maybe the reporter added an extra zero.   And, where did they get that Florida tops all other states?    Check out this data base from the Office of Refugee Resettlement for 2007.  California topped the list with 6706 refugees that year followed by Texas (4401), Minnesota (3198), New York (2979) then Florida with 2619.

We are our brothers keeper (even as unemployment sky rockets):

Gulf Coast president Michael Bernstein said a downturn in the economy could make it harder for new arrivals to be accepted.

“It’s a tough time to accept New Americans,” Bernstein said. “At the same time, we’re also a nation that understands we’re our brother’s keeper.”

Organizers noted that resettlement has gone beyond driving refugees from the airport to an apartment. [Although some NGO’s are accused of doing not much more than that!]

It’s not just about jobs or housing, which is very important, and food,” Bernstein said. “It’s also about resilience and recovery and healing from wounds that many, many thousands (experienced), have been through torture, genocide.”

Dr. Bernstein, you might want to check out this Wall Street Journal article (and the great graphic) yesterday entitled “Unemployment Rises in Every State” and note that Florida is one of the states with the fastest growth in unemployment.  If refugee resettlement isn’t now about jobs and housing, it will soon be!

Endnote:  On Iraqi refugees and jobs we have posted on 15 states where Iraqi refugees are unemployed and are complaining about it.  Here is a post on the most recent of those—Utah.

Nashville churches being asked to help Iraqis headed to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Church World Service, one of the top ten government contractors resettling refugees in the US, is behind a meeting in Nashville this Saturday to find churches to take care of Iraqis now headed to the US by the thousands.

Iraqis displaced by the war in their homeland are coming to the United States by the thousands. And Christians have a responsibility to care for them, faith leaders say.

A Nashville congregation will host a forum on Iraqi refugees on Saturday, hoping to draw attention to the plight of millions of Iraqis who have fled their homes since 2003.

The Saturday morning forum at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Nashville will feature a report from activist and journalist Kelly Hayes-Raitt, who worked with refugees in Iraq for several months in 2008. Organizers hope the event will rally support for the plight of refugees.

If Refugees International gets its way , or the Center for American Progress (Obama’s good friends) get their airlift these numbers will be increased ten-fold.

More than 12,000 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the U.S., with an additional 17,000 expected in 2009. That includes 26 Iraqis resettled in Knoxville last year by the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program.

The problem is, as we have now documented more than a dozen times, the Iraqis are generally well-educated, highly skilled, have lived upscale lives in Iraq and they want the same life here.  They aren’t getting it and they are not hesitant about voicing their dissatisfaction with their new American lives.

There is no mention in this news about whether the Iraqis arriving in Tennessee are the truly persecuted Christians or are Muslims.  But, here is a hint.

During the discussion, which will include a representative from the Islamic Society of Nashville, attendees will discuss practical ways they can assist refugees.

You can bet the representative of the Islamic Society of Nashville isn’t there to say, ‘oh yes, we need to take care of those Christians the Muslims are persecuting in Iraq.’

To learn more than you ever wanted to know about Iraqi refugees, visit our Iraqi category here, which now contains 300 posts!

A report on Iraq’s Internally Displaced people worth checking out

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) released a report this month on the situation in Iraq regarding its internally displaced people.  ‘Refugees’ are returning to their homes but often face problems when they do so.

IRAQ – Growing Numbers of Displaced Returning Home Continue to Face Basic Needs – Although there are growing numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) returning to their homes within Iraq, many are coming back home to be faced again with basic needs including shelter, health care or water and sanitation.

In the latest IOM needs assessment of Iraq’s internally displaced people, the report highlights Baghdad as the main destination for returnees but that often people are going back to find their homes destroyed and key infrastructure in disrepair. Many homes need to be rebuilt and buildings, water pipes, electrical networks and basic public services such as health centres are cited as in need of repair and rehabilitation to meet the needs of returning IDPs or refugees.

Note that fears of sectarian violence, not US military action, is primarily responsible for the shifting population.  290,000 have returned home so far.

There are an estimated number 2.8 million IDPs in Iraq, of which 1.6 million have been displaced since February 2006 when the bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra triggered a new upsurge in violence. A further 2.4 million Iraqis are refugees, living predominantly in Iraq’s neighbouring countries. Since 2006, IOM has identified more than 290,000 people who were internally displaced or who left Iraq as refugees as having returned to their homes.

When you look at the IOM report note that the largest majority were displaced from Baghdad (63.9%).  Then these numbers I found surprising.  A smaller percentage of the population, the Sunnis, controlled Iraq under Saddam.  So, I was under the impression from news reports that the Shia majority was now getting even and causing Sunni displacement, but these numbers show the opposite story.   Displacement breaks down as follows:

Arab Shia Muslim 57.7 %

Arab Sunni Muslim 30.7%

Kurd Sunni Muslim 3.7%

Assyrian Christian 2.8%

Chaldean Christian 1.7%

As Judy reported on many occasions, the Iraqi government must get on the ball and make the transition home as easy as possible.  It will be a key to Iraq’s future.  Right now US NGO’s are happy to drain Iraq of its best and brightest by airlifting them to the US to compete with increasingly out of work US workers!

What are they thinking! Airlift proposed for tens of thousands of Iraqis this year!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Jan. 24th:  Airlift idea spreads across the pond, article uses almost the same language as the proposal reported below.

You heard that right!    John Podesta’s hard left Center for American Progress is proposing we airlift up to 100,000 Iraqis who have worked for the US in virtually any capacity (day laborers?) to a location outside the US just until they can be processed (quickly) to live in your town.

Honestly, I don’t know if I can write this post without swearing!

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have served with the U.S. military and other organizations during the past five and a half years as translators, drivers, construction workers, engineers, and office workers. A disturbing trend has emerged: extremists and militia groups are targeting the estimated 30,000 to 100,000 U.S.-affiliated Iraqis as traitors for working with Americans. In many cases, the lives of these Iraqis and their families are in imminent danger. Many have become refugees or internally displaced persons within Iraq. These Iraqis urgently need and deserve America’s help, and the Obama administration should act quickly to remove them from harm’s way.

The Obama administration should initiate an immediate airlift—Operation Safe Haven Iraq 2009—of U.S.-affiliated Iraqis in need of protection as the best course of action for urgently addressing this problem.

IRAQ IS MUCH SAFER NOW!   WE WILL BE THERE FOR QUITE SOME TIME YET!   THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT WANTS ITS PEOPLE TO STAY AND REBUILD IRAQ!    WE HAVE A REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROCESS THAT IS BRINGING IRAQIS HERE RIGHT NOW!   AN AIRLIFT!   HAVE WE GONE MAD?

I guess so.   These radical leftwingers who will now be in control of our government cite previous airlifts as models:

Examples of previous United States airlifts and expedited refugee processing provide a model for action, including those for Kosovar Albanians in 1999, Iraqi Kurds in 1996, and South Vietnamese in 1975.

Vietnam was differant, we abandoned Vietnam.   As for the Kurds, don’t we have Kurdish gangs in cities like Nashville?  Wasn’t an Albanian refugee a member of the Ft. Dix Six?  I am not saying all the Iraqis who would be airlifted could be terrorists, but some will be very bad people.   

Oh, and admitting there could be a safety issue for America, these bright bulbs are proposing the tens of thousands be airlifted to Kuwait or Guam first to “keep the American public safe.”

The airlift model will greatly accelerate processing time, while keeping the American public safe by conducting processing in outside of the United States mainland.

Then what?  What if some are found to have terrorist ties and we already have them in Guam?  Are we just going to put them back on the plane and drop them off in Iraq?  We surely wouldn’t take them to Gitmo!

And don’t these radicals read the papers, don’t they know we have thousands of  recently arrived Iraqis right now who are very unhappy with their lives in America—they can’t find work and are living in lousy housing.   Will the airlifters tell the Iraqis the truth about their prospects here?  Here is just one of 15 locations we have identified where Iraqi refugees are unhappy with their lives in America, and want to go HOME!  We brought just over 13,000 Iraqis to the US in FY08 and can’t find employment for most of those.

I’m having a hard time going on with this, it is so insane.    But, one last thing before you read the whole hair-brained proposal.   Once here they suggest these Iraqis could be used in “Arabic language critical jobs” and eventually return to Iraq when they felt safe enough.

U.S.-affiliated Iraqis should be flown to the United States, where some can be funneled into Arabic language-critical jobs. Once the situation in Iraq has improved and U.S.-affiliated Iraqis feel confident about their safety, the expectation is that some of them will return to Iraq.

Why not keep Muslims (there is no mention of Christians in the proposal)  in the Middle East now and support them there until they return to Iraq, it would be much cheaper for the US taxpayer, not to mention safer.

P.S.  Podesta is Obama’s transition team head honcho, so this scheme has a good chance of coming true.  Learn more about the Soros-backed Center for American Progress at Discover the Networks here.

Codepink blogger: Iraqi refugees need lawyers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Surely you know the ladies at Codepink—you see them, dressed in pink, protesting for peace in unpeaceful ways.   Well, they have a blog (of course) called Pink Tank and this article popped up in my alerts yesterday.

The blogger reporting from Jordan tells a tale of a Sunni Muslim family wishing to get into the US (you can read the story yourself) who is turned down for resettlement supposedly because the father says he doesn’t know what will happen to them if they return to Iraq.

She then makes a case for legal representation for Iraqi prospective refugees.

Of course, no one knows what would happen to them if they went back to Iraq, although the most reasonable prediction would be death for one or all family members, but at this point his interviewer closed his file and the family got a notice from the US embassy that they were “ineligible for resettlement,” that “there is no appeal” and that the principal applicant may make a detailed request for review based on new evidence or significant error within 90 days.

There are no guarantees that we will be successful in pressing Iklass and Raed’s case, of course. But I hope I’ve demonstrated that at this point, a family in their situation needs a lawyer. Any rational person faced with this final determination on their entire future peppered with legalese would head straight for the nearest directory of attorneys. Unfortunately, refugees at this stage have no right to legal representation. No, more than that, they’re not allowed it. Our legal advocates can help them prepare their documents, make legal arguments on their behalf, and moot them before their last interview, assuming it is granted. But unlike an asylum seeker (who has already made it to US soil), these applicants may not bring a legal representative with them to meetings at IOM (International Organization for Migration), and their representatives are not allowed access to their files. Their legal rights are about on par with someone applying for a tourist visa – none.

Although she doesn’t venture there, you get three guesses who would fund the lawyer!   US taxpayer, US taxpayer, US taxpayer.