Multicultural advocates impatient with federal government not ‘Americanizing’ Iraqis fast enough.
Despite the U.S. government’s goal of bringing 12,000 Iraqi refugees to this country in fiscal year 2008, people involved with refugee resettlement locally and nationally see that as unlikely to happen.
“They are going to have to increase their rate of intake very substantially in order to meet that level, because it has been going very slow in the first few months of this year,” said Kathleen Newland, director of the refugee program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Anne Curtis, director of Bridge Refugee Services of Chattanooga, said some Iraqis have resettled in Chattanooga, but they arrived before 1996.
“It seemed last spring there was a big buzz about it (Iraqi refugees), but we still don’t know anything specific,” she said.
Ambassador James Foley, senior coordinator on Iraqi refugee issues, said 375 Iraqi refugees arrived in the United States in January, bringing the total for this fiscal year to 1,432.
“Since the program started last year, 3,040 Iraqis have arrived in the U.S. as refugees. Others have come in under different immigrant visas,” Mr. Foley said during a briefing on the Iraqi Refugee and Special Immigrant Visa Admissions programs earlier this month.
To meet the goal of 12,000 resettlements, the government would have to resettle 10,568 Iraqi refugees between now and the end of the fiscal year in September, figures show.
“(Iraqi resettlement) is very much up in the air,” said Marilyn Bresnan, executive director of Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services in Knoxville. “We are already trying to make some contact within the (Iraqi) community to help resettle.”
Contact Bridge Refugee Settlement Services:
123 Dameron Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37917
(865) 540-1311
E-mail Us