Hazara Nation

the daily

Haydar
It’s a sunny Saturday in Tukwila, Wash., and a party is going on at Showalter Middle School, near Sea-Tac airport. Children run after balloons, parents exchange recipes and teenagers clap along with the lively pop music.

It is the spring cultural celebration party organized by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to helping refugees around the world. The IRC is one of the resettlement agencies helping people to start a new life in Seattle. These are people forced to leave their home country because of war or oppression. They arrive after a long journey through exile, U.N. administration politics and screenings from host countries.
A group is dancing and singing. The Iraqi families brought CDs of their favorite music and they clap hands together, repeating the chorus and pushing each other in a circle of dance.

Haydar stays outside the circle. He wears an elegant suit and doesn’t feel like dancing today.

When the United States first intervened in Iraq, Haydar was a young electrician who had recently graduated from a vocational institute. In the fall of 2004, he was hired by Titan Company, the main provider of interpreters for the U.S. military.

“It was a good job, well paid and I had a good insurance, but it was very dangerous also. I was working with the National Guard from Mississippi ­— it was Quickly Reaction Forces,” Haydar said.

It was an intense and dangerous job in which he felt he could help his country by correcting the information troops had by getting accurate directions for targets and explaining situations to the civilians. A native of Kerbala, the holiest shrine of Shi’a islam, Haydar saw his collaboration with the U.S. military as an effort to keep peace in the religious sanctuary.

“In April 2005, I got injured on the way to Baghdad. It was during 18 days in the CASH hospital (combat support hospital) in the Green Zone,” he said.

After numerous surgeries, he went back to his hometown and continued working as a translator for the coalition forces. But the situation deteriorated: He received threats from the militia, the “Mahdi Army,” and it became too dangerous for him to stay. So when he had an opportunity to go to Jordan for medical care, he decided to leave Iraq. This was in May 2006. In July, he heard that one of his coworkers had been assassinated.

“We were a group of injured interpreters in the hospital in Amman [Jordan] and we had decided not to go back to Iraq,” Haydar said.

Their requests for visas were rejected by the U.S. embassy until journalists broadcast their stories. The large amount of publicity the group’s case received, in addition to Congress’s commitment to admit a quota of Iraqi refugees, reopened the perspective of asylum in the United States. This was in February 2007.

The following process was long.

“We filed applications with the U.N., we had interviews, too many interviews, with the UNHCR, the IOM [International Office of Migrations], security screenings, etc,” Haydar recounted. “It took us until the end of August to get the visa. I arrived in Seattle on Sept. 21.”

In a report describing the challenges faced by Iraqi refugees, the IRC points out that despite the commitment to admit 12,000 refugees for the 2008 fiscal year, the U.S. government had only resettled 1,608 when the report was published in March 2008. The NGO explains the lengthy admission process as one of the main obstacles. Various federal agencies are involved that rely on the services of international agencies like the UNHCR and the International Organization of Migration to select and interview asylum-seekers.

The NGO also observes the absence of a major effort directed to victims of the Iraq War, while during the Cold War and the Vietnam War, the U.S. government successfully protected and resettled hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Haydar feels comfortable enough in the United States. He’s just disappointed. He feels people look down on him because he is a refugee.

“People here don’t understand where we come from,” he said. “They think Iraq is a desert with stupid tribes. They don’t know we have a history.”

Haydar is educated and fights the stereotype of the illiterate refugee coming from a village with no electricity. He got his driver’s license, bought a car and found a job teaching Arabic in Fort Lewis, Wash.

Abu Marwan

Some of Haydar’s Iraqi neighbors in Tukwila do not have the same adaptability. Abu Marwan, for example, cannot speak English. He was a goldsmith in Iraq, had his own store in Baghdad and did well until the war tore everything apart. His religious community, the Saba’i, was a victim of the sectarian violence and the militias. He decided to take his wife and their three children to Syria and apply for asylum from there. They arrived in Seattle in November 2007, and Abu Marwan still does not have a job.

Those who are granted the status of refugees are allowed to work; they receive welfare assistance, food stamps and health care coupons. The U.S. Department of State, which provides most of the funding to assist refugees, sets a goal of achieving self-sufficiency in six months.

Community services are also provided to help refugees. Most of the time, this help to resettle is coordinated by nonprofit organizations. In Seattle, the IRC is one of the most active organizations in charge of resettling refugees. The IRC has a network of volunteers helping the families to resettle, and this is how I met the Iraqi families in Tukwila. My job as a “friend-of-the-family mentor” was to welcome them and to give tutoring in English, in addition to the ESL courses provided by a local association. I was also helping with daily life things that are a nightmare for refugees, like making a doctor’s appointment when you don’t know which clinic accepts your medical coupons, or looking on Craigslist for low-skilled jobs in the area.

Abu Marwan appears very depressed.

“I wish I obtained asylum to Australia rather than the U.S.,” he said. “I don’t have family here in Seattle. All my relatives are refugees in Australia.”

But his kids, two teenage boys and a 9-year-old girl who is skilled in English, are starting to build a future in Seattle. And since their mother is now pregnant, inch’allah (Arabic for “God willing”) in few months, they will have a new American-born sibling.