Sante Fe, New Mexico.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Alexis Roblan: The DLG-Proust-Actors Studio Questionnaire
Alexis was born and raised in Coos Bay, a small town on the very rainy coast of Oregon. With her childhood home in the “tsunami zone,” she grew up constantly worried about the long overdue earthquake set to strike in the Pacific Northwest. “I spent my entire childhood waiting for it everyday,” she says.
Read moreThe Ongoing Syrian Refugee Crisis
With more than half of the nation’s governors opposing the resettlement of Syrians in their states, and the House of Representatives passing legislation that would increase security checks and make it even more difficult for refugees from Syria and Iraq to enter the US, there is a wave of anti-refugee and anti-immigrant fervor sweeping parts of the country. Presidential candidates and elected officials have even suggested closing mosques, detaining Syrian refugees already in the country, and creating a government registry for Muslims. Airline passengers with Middle Eastern and “Muslim” sounding-names have experienced an increase in racial profiling after the Paris attacks, and Syrians already in the US are fearing a backlash.
With all this fear and negativity, comedian John Olivier has taken on the critics of refugee resettlement with great intelligence and verve by explaining the extensive security screening process for refugees and also importantly by sharing the story of one Syrian migrant girl. In this vein, here are a few more stories of Syrian refugees.
Radwan and Sanaa
In late 2011, as the government of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on the rebellious city of Homs, Syria, Radwan Mughrbel and his wife Sanaa Hammadeh decided to leave their country. The war, the bombings, snipers and random violence had forced many residents indoors, and Sanaa was afraid to leave their home to shop for fresh food. The family resorted to eating moldy bread on some days, and they were especially afraid their sons, Soubei and Ahmad, who were then in their early teens, would be kidnapped. “The government would see kids on the street and take them, beat them,” she says in the New York Times. We didn’t want them to kidnap our children.”
They left Syria in November 2011, with only a single change of clothes, and spent years in Jordan trying to obtain refugee status. When the United Nations refugee agency asked where they wanted to resettle, the answer to them was clear. “America,” Radwan says. “They brought us here, and I feel safe, like nothing bad can happen to us. Now we have a beautiful life.” He became upset at the suggestion that refugees like him could be a threat. “We didn’t cross illegally,” he says. “We went through hell to get here.”
On their first morning in their new Michigan apartment, they admired the lawns and trees. “We didn’t walk around because we were afraid we would get lost,” Radwan says. “When I saw all the grass,” Sanaa adds. “I felt that I was reborn.”
Fayez and Shaza
Fayez and his wife Shaza fled from Daraa, Syria to Jordan in 2013, where they applied for refugee status in the US. After the two-year application process, they moved near Dallas this past February and are now raising two daughters—an infant and a toddler.
"I am happy because I live [in] America," Fayez, who works at Walmart, told CBS News. While the couple was concerned about their own safety after protesters at a mosque in Dallas, Fayez said in his opinion “it's impossible that any terrorist can come to America through a refugee program, which requires a six- or seven-month-long background check.”
Nidal Alhayak
Nidal Alhayak fled Syria with his wife in 2012, where he’d been tortured and imprisoned by the Assad regime, and crossed over the border to Jordan where he applied for asylum to the US. He explains the refugee application process to NPR: "There are six different interviews with the Homeland Security committee where they asked us the same questions just to check for consistency in the story…So, it would be impossible for me to make up a story or lie about it because they would vet us out and make sure everything was right."
After more than two years of the application process, he got a phone call telling him that he and his wife would be resettled in the United States. "Before I got the phone call, I was the kind of person who had given up on life. But then this phone call was like a breath of fresh air that blew life back into me," he says. "First of all, I consider myself fortunate that I made it to the United States," he says. "I consider it the number one country for democracy and freedom for humanity, worldwide."
Nidal, who now works at a factory in Michigan and is still learning English, says he understands how some might be concerned about ISIS infiltrating the refugee program. "I totally understand their fear," he says. "I want to assure them we're not like that. We went through a lot. We went through terror ourselves. And there's no way in the world we'd do such a horrible act."
These are just a few stories out of the millions of Syrian refugees, and there are many more sharing heartbreaking tales of their escape from their country’s brutal civil war. Despite the anti-refugee sentiment popular among many political leaders, not everyone in the US wants to turn Syrians away. Aid groups are continuing to assist in resettling refugees, and doumentary filmmaker Michael Moore says they can live at his house.
Honor My Journey
Liz and the Llama
Liz at the London Zoo.
This past week the Rome District Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) hosted a conference at a unique space, the beloved London Zoo. The conference, appropriately titled "No Monkey Business. Just Immigration Law" (yes, I'm not kidding), took place in a beautiful Georgian building on the Zoo grounds with a terrace overlooking Penguin Beach, and featured some excellent immigration speakers. In this photo, Liz consults with one of the nation's foremost H-1B specialists. Yes, that's right. Apart from producing a beautiful and soft wool, llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks, which makes them perfect for H-1Bs. And then they can deliver the petitions to US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) themselves, since they can carry about 25% to 30% of their body weight!
A Revealing Conversation: An Introduction to Immigration Issues HR Managers Must Have on Their Radar
Hiring, payroll, health insurance and 401k administration, employee satisfaction, training, I-9 compliance, workers comp, state and federal regulations to follow—human resources personnel must be able to juggle a variety of functions. And on top of all these, HR is also usually tasked with acting as liaison and point-of-contact between foreign national employees and immigration counsel. For HR staff who don't have prior experience in immigration, it can all seem overwhelming and daunting, especially all those acronyms!
Read moreThe Guardian: “G20 to discuss threat of ISIS infiltrators among EU migrants after Paris attacks”
After the horrific recent terrorist attacks and bombings by the Islamic State, or ISIS, world leaders at the G20 summit in Turkey are not only discussing their joint response to the global threat posed by ISIS but also the supposed fear of terrorists infiltrating the stream of migrants fleeing into the EU and elsewhere. This fear was sparked by the discovery of a Syrian refugee passport found near or on the body of one suicide bomber in Paris and has led many to speculate on the danger in accepting Syrians and refugees of other nationalities, even though there are still many unanswered questions about who the passport belonged to, whether it was stolen, and other key details.
The Most Vulnerable
EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker said in the Guardian: “We should not mix the different categories of people coming to Europe. The one responsible for the attacks in Paris…he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker.” At the G20 summit, President Obama said: "The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism. They are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife. They are parents. They are children. They are orphans and it is very important...that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism."
If there is no end to the Syrian civil war, the EU is predicting that as many as three million refugees will arrive in the next year. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed that more refugees be given jobs and education in the semi-permanent camps on the border of Syria to discourage them from making the dangerous journey to the EU. Poland’s new government has already stated they won’t accept the EU migrant quotas. “In the wake of the tragic events in Paris, Poland doesn’t see the political possibilities to implement a decision on the relocation of refugees,” Konrad Szymanski, the nation’s future minister for European affairs, was quoted as saying on Wpolityce.pl website. “The attacks mean there’s a need for an even deeper revision of the European policy regarding the migrant crisis.”
Anti-Refugee Backlash
As EU leaders continue to deal with the influx of Syrian migrants, many are fearing an anti-immigrant and refugee backlash, including in Germany which has taken in the majority of Syrian refugees and has seen a dramatic surge in attacks against migrants and refugee shelters. American Muslim communities are also fearing a backlash after the Paris attacks.
In the US meanwhile, more than twenty-five states have declared they will not accept the resettlement of Syrian refugees, even though the security vetting process can take approximately twenty-four months, and many states have yet to receive any refugees. One South Carolina town even preemptively passed a resolution against the resettlement of refugees in their county limits, even though no Syrian refugees have been resettled in the entire state. The move to not accept Syrian refugees is more symbolic, given that out of the millions fleeing their country’s civil war, only 2,000 Syrian refugees have been granted entrance to the US in the past four years; moreover, it is unclear what effect these announcements will have, since it is President Obama not state governors who “has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States.” House Republicans are also creating a task force on Syrian refugees to pursue possible legislation to "pause" the flow of refugees into the US.
Religious Test for Refugees?
In a slightly different proposal, presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz suggested that the US prioritize and accept only Christian Syrian refugees, a move which President Obama condemned. “When I hear political leaders suggesting that there should be a religious test for admitting which person fleeing which country,” Obama said in the Guardian, “when some of these folks themselves come from other countries, that’s shameful. That’s not America. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”
