The bloggers at Democracy Arsenal have it, while those at Refugee Resettlement Watch (and, by extension, the anti-immigrant ranters at the Center for Immigration Studies they so like to quote) do not.
Contrast these two posts on the resettlement of 1350 Iraqi Palestinians in the United States. The first, from RRW:
It really is no surprise to hear, we have reported on many occasions* about the lobbying/public relations effort that groups like Refugees International have been waging , that it has been confirmed by the US State Department—-Palestinians, who were in Iraq at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, would be coming to the US. About ten days ago we speculated that this might be in the works, here.
From the Christian Science Monitor (hat tip: three of our readers!):
Atlanta – The State Department confirmed today that as many as 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians – once the well-treated guests of Saddam Hussein and now at outs with much of Iraqi society – will be resettled in the US, mostly in southern California, starting this fall.
It will be the largest-ever resettlement of Palestinian refugees into the US – and welcome news to the Palestinians who fled to Iraq after 1948 but who have had a tough time since Mr. Hussein was deposed in 2003. Targeted by Iraqi Shiites, the mostly-Sunni Palestinians have spent recent years in one of the region’s roughest refugee camps, Al Waleed, near Iraq’s border with Syria.
“Really for the first time, the United States is recognizing a Palestinian refugee population that could be admitted to the US as part of a resettlement program,” says Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch in Washington.
Given the US’s past reluctance to resettle Palestinians – it accepted just seven Palestinians in 2007 and nine in 2008 – the effort could ruffle some diplomatic feathers.
I must say, if the State Department is sending them to California, they must be in on bringing down the economy of arguably the most financially-beleaguered state in the US. Maybe the Obama/Clinton State Department is following the Cloward-Piven principle on how one brings down a government by overwhelming the welfare system! (To learn more about the Cloward-Piven strategy start with Judy’s post, here. To those of us who cannot understand the idiocy of the Left’s drive to import more poverty, it is the explanation!)
Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies charged that the State Department is dropping off its problems in a town near you, and not necessarily a California town.
But some critics say the State Department is sloughing off its problems onto American cities, especially since in this case the Palestinians were sympathizers of Hussein, who was deposed by the US.
“This is politically a real hot potato,” says Mark Krikorian, director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, adding, “[A]merica has become a dumping ground for the State Department’s problems – they’re tossing their problems over their head into Harrisburg, Pa., or Omaha, Neb.”
To further illuminate Mr. Krikorian’s point, why didn’t the UNHCR and the US State Department put pressure on rich Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to take their Muslim brethren? To their credit these camp-dwelling Palestinians caught at the Iraq-Syria border themselves called their co-religionists in Arab-run countries hypocrites for not taking them in—where is the much ballyhooed Muslim charity? We know why they don’t take them—Islamists must keep the refugee thorn in the side of the Israeli government. They must keep the hate going.
And, by the way, these Palestinians will come to the US in the Iraqi refugee quota, so besides residents of the resettlement cities not really knowing who their neighbors are, presumably they will take 1350 places from possibly Christian or other minority refugees from Iraq. I hope the State Department at least takes care not to resettle them in the midst of Shia Muslims in your town, thus bringing the problems of the Middle East closer to home.
Here’s the reality: Sunni and Shia refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere are resettled side by side in the United States all the time, including in my city, without any problems. In fact, refugees of the same nationality often go out of their way to help each other through the resettlement process regardless of religion. Remember: refugees are not the people taking part in sectarian violence, they are the people fleeing it. What part of that is so difficult for Ann Corcoran and company to understand?
Now, Democracy Arsenal’s reality check:
Mark Krikorian at The Corner expressed dismay at the State Department announcement that around 1,350 Iraqi Palestinian refugees, whom he delicately characterized as “Saddam’s BFF’s”, will be resettled in the U.S.
According to Refugees International and Amnesty International, the small Palestinian community in Iraq dates to the founding of Israel. Beginning in 1948, Palestinians driven from their homes found sanctuary in Baghdad. The community grew in 1991 when Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait after the Gulf War. After the U.S. invasion in 2003, the Iraqi Palestinians became the targets of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, rape, and killings. Many tried to flee, but were denied entry by Syria, Jordan and other Arab nations. Over fifteen-hundred Palestinians now live in the al-Tanf and al-Waleed camps along the border with Syria, whose living conditions Amnesty International characterized as “appalling.” Human Rights Watch refugee policy director Bill Frelick, who has visited a camp outside Jordan, says that the Iraqi Palestinians are “apolitical,” and “basically desperate, scared, miserable and ready to just get out of Iraq.”
These people are not “Saddam’s BFF’s.” Their parents and grandparents resettled in Baghdad because it was the only place available to them when their own homes were destroyed. Now, they are forced to leave Iraq because of more violence, and Arab nations are still refusing them. The U.S.-led war in Iraq disproportionately exposed Iraqi Palestinians to violence, torture, and murder. While know-nothings like Krikorian may think that all Palestinians present terrorist threats, the rest of us should recognize that the U.S. has a responsibility to ensure that the people driven out by our war have the opportunity to resettle somewhere stable and begin a new life. Iceland, Sweden and Canada have already accepted several hundred Iraqi Palestinians. It is time for the U.S. to step up.
Agreed. The decision to resettle the Iraqi Palestinians is a humane and welcome one.
July 13, 2009
Please Educate Yourself Before You Write Ignorant Blog Posts: Iraqi Minority Refugees Edition
As usual, Ann Corcoran is apoplectic over the idea that Iraqi refugees might be resettled in the United States, and she’s got some questions for the UNHCR.
Dumb questions.
After reading a news story about 186 Iranian Kurdish refugees being moved from the Iraq-Jordan border Al Waleed camp to a larger camp closer to the Syrian border, Ann’s first thought was:
Why yes, Ann! It is all part of a vast conspiracy to make refugee resettlement agency employees fabulously wealthy with lavish 30k per year salaries and easy 80 hour workweeks.
Not to mention the undermining Western civilization part. Can’t forget that aspect of it. That’s my favourite part of this work, personally.
Oh, and you definitely shouldn’t trust Human Rights Watch or any other group that has visited camps like Al Waleed to see the refugees’ living conditions first-hand. No, you should trust the robust and thoughtful skepticism of far right bloggers who err on the side of all refugees being a little less than human and probably terrorists.
Ann, Ann, Ann. Educating you grows tiresome, but here’s a little lesson in the messiness of things you so clearly do not understand.
Many refugees fall into minority group categories in their home countries. Where they aren’t national minorities, they are often numerical minorities where they used to live. Minorities of all kinds –racial, ethnic, religious, sexual– are often the first victims in internal conflicts, and they are commonly left in situations of life-threatening vulnerability and destitution even after a conflict formally ends, because many post-war power-sharing arrangements result in ethnically-based spoils systems and even legal orders that de jure disenfranchise minorities (this has certainly been the case in post-war Bosnia, for example.)
By the way, Ann, five churches were bombed in Baghdad yesterday. The attacks targeted Iraq’s dwindling minority Christian community. Religious minorities (Christians, Mandeans, Yazidis and others) have been completely driven out of many areas of Iraq and those left face constant predation.
Ann was annoyed –and confused, naturally– by this statement:
She wrote:
Ok, this is getting ridiculous. If you’re going to pass yourself off as some kind of contrarian expert on refugees from the Middle East, you should actually know something about the Middle East.
Iraq is not the only country the in region that has seen violent conflict and internal repression over the past few decades, nor the only one seeing those now. There are Iranian refugees (Kurds and Persians) in Iraq because they fled repression by the Iranian government. Remember (or, rather, please educate yourself about how) the historical homeland of the Kurds is divided between four countries, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. And Kurds have been badly treated by the governments of all those states.
The Sudanese and Somalis likely ended up in Iraq because they were trying to get somewhere else and got stuck, or decided to apply for refugee status with the first UNHCR office they came across, rather than risking a longer and more perilous journey to Europe.
Of course not. The UN would like Iraqi minorities to stay where they are, but right now, for far too many, that’s not safe, and because the UN cannot provide security for these people, the next best thing (or least worst thing) is to provide them with another alternative in the form of assistance in refugee and IDP camps, and, for those who cannot reasonably be expected to ever go home again, permanent resettlement in a third country.
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Filed under Anti-Refugee Commentators, Before Resettlement, Dispelling Myths
Tags: Ann Corcoran, Iraqi minorities, Iraqi refugees, refugee resettlement, Refugee Resettlement Watch