Iraqi Refugees:
Why 'Little Baghdad' Won't Form in the US
By Andrew Lam
Little
Saigon in Orange County, Calif., and Little Havana
in Miami, each built by refugees, are now thriving
communities with growing political and economic
clout. But they also serve as painful reminders
of America's failures in its overseas ventures.
For this reason, don't expect a Little Baghdad to
appear on US soil any time soon -- even as huge
numbers of Iraqi refugees continue to flee their
ravaged land.
The United States had, until recently, reserved
only 500 spots for Iraqi refugees in 2007 - though
the State Department says it wants to allocate as
many as 20,000 US refugee slots to Iraqis. It would
like to bring more in, but blames an unwieldy UN
processing system. Perhaps the real problem has
more to do with politics: Accepting Iraqi refugees
would be akin to America admitting defeat in its
efforts to pacify Iraq and a huge setback in its
fight against terrorism in the region.
Nearly 2 million Iraqi refugees currently live outside
the country, and another 1.5 million are displaced
within. As conditions in Iraq worsen, more are crossing
borders. Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia are
all seeing a rise in Iraqi refugees. Syria in particular,
which shares a 450-mile border with Iraq, is bearing
the brunt of the mass exodus. Syrian officials estimated
more than 700,000 Iraqis of all stripes are now
living inside their country.
"We're not meeting our basic obligation to
the Iraqis who've been imperiled because they worked
for the US government," notes Kirk W. Johnson
in a recent New York Times article. Johnson, who
worked for the United States Agency for International
Development in Falluja in 2005, writes, "We
could not have functioned without their hard work,
and it's shameful that we've nothing to offer them
in their bleakest hour."
Indeed, those working as interpreters for the US
and British armies and for foreign journalists --
not to mention those hired by US companies doing
reconstruction and those working in the Green Zone
-- have been targeted by various insurgent groups.
Their lives will be exponentially imperiled once
US forces pull out.
"In Iraq there's no love lost between American
soldiers and the locals," notes Quang X. Pham,
author of "A Sense of Duty," who fought
in the first Persian Gulf War. "Iraqi refugees,
unlike Vietnamese refugees, have no champion like
President Gerald Ford, and they will find much opposition
to their immigration to the United States due to
fallout from 9-11 and specifically, the Patriot
Act."
While congress debated whether to let in Vietnamese
refugees in 1975 -- Sen. George McGovern said it
was better for "Vietnamese to stay in Vietnam,"
and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) thought that "barmaids,
prostitutes and criminals" should be screened
out -- President Ford threw his support behind the
refugees.
Such an act today, from a president who still speaks
of the war in Iraq as winnable, is unimaginable.
How could President Bush accept Iraqi refugees when
only last year he described post-invasion Iraq as
a nation of "freedom" and "democracy"?
On the ground in Iraq, of course, the situation
is dire. "The current exodus is the largest
long-term population movement in the Middle East
since the displacement of Palestinians following
the creation of Israel in 1948," according
to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
In a news release last week, António Guterres,
UN High Commissioner on Refugees, says that "the
longer this conflict goes on, the more difficult
it becomes for the hundreds of thousands of people
displaced, and the communities that are trying to
help them -- both inside and outside Iraq. The burden
on host communities and governments in the region
is enormous."
But according to Faiza Al-Arji, who fled from Baghdad
to Jordan with her family recently, help is not
forthcoming. She and her family keep a blog called
afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com. "Here, in expatriation
and dispersal," she writes, "I have seen
so many organizations, or heard about them. I spared
no efforts to obtain some medical help for an Iraqi
who was injured by shrapnel's or burns, or to get
some financial or material donations. But to no
avail...All I found [were] lies and stalling."
Al-Arji doesn't spare her fellow well-to-do Iraqi
refugees from criticism. "There are so many
rich and millionaire Iraqis here, who turn their
backs [on] the Iraqi poor," she writes, "as
if they do not know them, as if they do not belong
to the same torn, wounded country. They meet each
other in fancy restaurants and drive the most luxurious
cars, but have no mercy in their hearts for their
brothers."
For the majority, life in exile is a life of poverty.
The United Nations reported that women are increasingly
forced to resort to prostitution. Child labor has
become a scourge. It also estimated that an additional
2.7 million would be internally displaced in Iraq
this year. In Syria, more than 30 percent of Iraqi
children are without schooling.
During the Cold war, a refugee fleeing a communist
country became an automatic icon for the West. President
Ronald Reagan in his farewell address talked of
boat people who waved their SOS flags to US sailors
-- their rescuers -- yelling, "Hello! Freedom
man!" The story is a poignant reminder of the
way the United States once symbolized freedom and
sweet liberty in the eyes of the dispossessed.
That perception has been irrevocably altered in
the age of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Homeland Security
and the government-condoned torture and eroding
human and immigrant rights. Few Iraqi refugees would
contemplate America as an asylum country these days,
and that speaks volume as to how the world views
America.
Yet there is a clear moral if not geopolitical mandate
for the United States to help Iraq's refugees. In
Vietnam, many of those who allied themselves with
America during the war were sent to re-education
camps, some were summarily executed and many stripped
their properties. A far worse fate is likely for
those who threw their lot with America in Iraq,
and who have now quickly become victims of its latest
foreign policy failure. - New America Media
(Andrew Lam is a NAM editor and author of “Perfume
Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora”
(2005, Heyday Books) which recently won a PEN/Beyond
Margins Award).
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