America’s newest immigrant Muslims, th …
America’s newest immigrant Muslims, the Iraqi refugees*
Morad takes pride in speaking about the man he used to be in Iraq. “I had a nice, big house,” he says. “I could get for my family whatever they want.”
Here, when he needed clothing and blankets for his family — which is shivering through its first Utah winter — he says he was told to visit a second-hand shop. It was humbling, but he did it.
When Morad complained that he could not find a job and needed money to pay his bills, he said a state worker suggested he go wait outside a church or mosque and beg for money. But that was too much for his pride to bear.
“To ask for money like some poor man?” he asks, his eyes redden and fill with tears. “I need help, yes. I am poor now, yes. But must I beg? Is this America? Is this what I gave my legs for?”
Morad drops his head into hands. “Sometimes I think that suicide is good for me,” he cries.
The anger and despair related in this story is representative of what I hear among the refugees I know in my area. My friends complain that the US Shiite community (the refugees are mixed Sunni/Shia, but on balance there are more Shiites) has far less money and therefore far fewer mosques and community centers in the US than Sunnis, so finding comfort in religious community has been more difficult.
- There are people of different religious backgrounds coming too. Some refugee agencies have focused on bringing over Mandaean refugees, who were introduced to me and described in the newspaper as “Christians” but are something else entirely.
thabet, 
awais 9:15 pm on January 8, 2009 Permalink
“a state worker suggested he go wait outside a church or mosque and beg for money.”
That’s fucked up.
PI.info 10:43 pm on January 8, 2009 Permalink
I was told by the director of a refugee agency that they have a policy of ‘rapid, total immersion.’ They don’t want refugees to become dependent on the agency so the agency tries to cut them loose pretty quickly and let them muddle along and adjust on their own as being the best way to get established. The agencies get money for resettling refugees, and my friend suspects its all a big lie to hold onto more money by providing fewer services.
On the other hand, the agencies have incredible power over these people’s lives, so it makes psychological sense (to me) that formerly highly successful middle-class professional people would chafe against the seeming overseer/enabler of their newfound poverty and low status, even if the overseer is benevolent and well intentioned. OTOH, I’ve talked to some people at the agencies that felt, well, betrayed, by the resentment that turned up in some of their personal relationships with the refugees.
Willow 11:38 am on January 9, 2009 Permalink
My husband works in legal aid for refugees. He’s got stories that would turn your hair white. The level of corruption and racism in the refugee/asylee processing system of this country rivals any third world bureaucracy. There is little meaningful oversight.
thabet 11:48 am on January 9, 2009 Permalink
If you’re black, you go back.
If you’re brown, you sit down.
If you’re white, you’re alright.
PI.info 12:09 pm on January 9, 2009 Permalink
Thanks Willow. There’s a good story here for any intrepid journalists out there who happen to be reading this.