Word: iraqi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even in Stockholm, Iraqis often find their careers stalled while they spend months in Swedish-language classes. The government has made attendance in language classes a precondition for receiving asylum benefits. Then comes the slog of requalifying in their profession. While Iraqis in Stockholm praise the Swedes' welcome, they struggle to persuade locals to hire them for professional jobs. "We have a lot of highly educated people driving taxis," says Faried al-Suheil, who fled Baghdad for Stockholm in 1993, moved back in 2003, then returned to Stockholm last summer. He stood at the doorway of the Iraqi prayer hall...
...both the new Iraqi arrivals and their Scandinavian hosts, coexistence has not come easily. Swedish officials fret about the potential security risks and the costs posed by a swelling population of displaced Muslims. Although relieved to have escaped the grinding violence of Iraq, Sweden's Iraqis face the prospect of having to rebuild shattered lives and find work in an alien society. For many, the trauma of Iraq is inescapable. Recent arrivals like Alaa say they fear being hunted down by sectarian rivals in Stockholm. "We don't know who is who here," says Alaa. In a Swedish government asylum...
Being accepted into Sweden is relatively simple compared with what it takes to actually get there. Iraqis say the odyssey north typically costs $10,000 per person and involves relying on a network of nameless smugglers and middlemen. Most Iraqis flee first to Jordan; from there smugglers arrange flights to Istanbul, where it is easy to find illegal European Union passports--red passports, as the Iraqis call them, which contain the refugees' real photos but use other people's names. "Daniel," 23, a Christian Iraqi student sitting in a Stockholm café, said he bought a fake Iraqi passport...
...however, has been reluctant to open its doors, admitting just 18 Iraqi refugees in 2005 and 202 in 2006. In February the State Department announced that it would admit up to 7,000 more, giving special consideration to those Iraqis who worked for the U.S. government. But that's still just a fraction of the number of Iraqis in need. And although the Bush Administration has offered to cover about a third of the $60 million that the U.N. says is needed for the refugees, the U.S.'s European and Arab allies think Washington should cover far more...
...parsimony? U.S. officials argue that resettling Iraqis will accelerate the country's brain drain. Admitting large numbers of Arabs also raises anxieties among some Americans that terrorists could slip in--even though refugees are among the most exhaustively screened migrants. But Bush Administration critics say the biggest reason Washington has been slow to act is that doing so would be an admission of failure in Iraq. Says Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor: "If the U.S. government were to do an active resettlement regime for Iraqi refugees...