Iraqi Refugees in The US

LA Weekly has a feature on the large community of Iraqi refugees in El Cajon, California and the struggles they face.

“Danger, bombings,” Silewa says, “everyday killings.” Denho explains that his parents, who are Christian, still live in Baghdad and receive threats because of their religion. “Now they can’t [step] outside,” he says. “They can’t buy anything.” A Muslim militia member killed a friend who lived near his parents. I ask Denho if he wants to bring his parents to the United States. “I wish,” he says, “but how?”

Silewa came to America in order to gain permanent residency and bring his wife and two sons, who ended up in Germany. But he hasn’t seen his family in three years. The family-reunification process can stretch on for many years, and even if all their papers were in order, Silewa says, he has no idea how he would pay for their airfare from Germany. With no car and no job, Silewa sits in his apartment and thinks about his family.

“I still can’t sleep,” he says through a translator from the local Chaldean Middle Eastern Social Services office. “I am still thinking a lot about my family. What really makes it worse is that I’m not finding a job to support myself and to help my family [come here].” He and Denho, Silewa says, “both sit all night and just cry. I really want to cry just to release it.” Almost every night is the same, their American dreams just out of reach.

As Mark Leon Goldberg points out on UN Dispatch:

As opposed to other western countries that have received large numbers of Iraqi asylum seekers, the United States has a smaller social safety net. . . . [R]efugee families in the United States face the double hurdles of chronic poverty and adapting to life in a country in which they do not speak the language. It is a pretty tragic situation.