Feature Photo and Above Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran
A Glimpse Correspondent working with refugees in Egypt questions the value of having a quota for the number of refugees allowed to immigrate to the United States.
A woman covers her eyes with her hands and cries into them. She is catching her tears, ashamed that they are falling. She says, “They raped me.”
I ask her, “How many times?” I ask her, “Did they hit you?” I ask her, “Did they say they were going to kill you afterward?”
I maintain my distance. I choose my words carefully and I say them in a placid tone, as if I were asking her about the weather. This is my job: to be impartial, to be fair. I pick out the necessary details and find the objective angle.
I bullet-point a list of small crimes and large ones. Of violence committed against a body and of violence committed against a soul. I write a testimony that displays these details in text, as if the scars on her body weren’t visible enough by themselves.
She is Sudanese. She spent her youth in Darfur. She lived in a village and her father owned goats, which she loved like they were family. She called them pets. Then in the early hours of an anonymous morning a year ago, Janjaweed militiamen of northern Sudan stormed into her village on horseback and burned it down while people slept inside their huts, which had suddenly turned to kindle. The militiamen stole half of all the livestock and shot the rest. They took the women they wanted, and kissed them. Then touched them. Then shamed them. Again, and again, and again.
Photo: hdptcar
I asked her, “How many died?” She responded by trying to count. When she passed one hundred I said I didn’t want to know anymore.
But some, she said, were lucky enough to escape. Some, like her, even made it out of Sudan and all the way to Egypt.
She’d run through the bush on foot, made it to a town where she scraped enough money together to buy a passport, and ferried her way up the Nile to Luxor. A bus ride later, she was in Cairo.
Then, after six months as an unwanted refugee in a country that denied her citizenship, denied her the right to work, and barraged her with racism and sexual harassment, she meandered quietly into my area of the office, sat down, and asked if she could leave the continent that birthed her for an ambiguous place she’d seen only in the movies. She asked if I could get her to America. Amreeka, she called it.
Her story caused my stomach to turn upside down and suddenly I felt like I was falling. I wanted to vomit and scream murder at all those men with pistols and machetes like it would bring this woman’s goats back. Like it would bring back her family.
What killed my spirit wasn’t the fact that humans could commit these crimes and justify them by calling it ‘war’. It was the fact that she wasn’t unusual. She was one tragedy in a million. I had a boy like her the next day. And then an entire family after that. They came from Iraq and Eritrea and Ethiopia and Sudan. They were not extraordinary or unique and I met one every single day.
As a legal intern working for an aid office for refugees in Cairo, my job is to process people and paper. I conduct an interview with a displaced person or family from this or that conflict zone, and write their stories as testimonies. Then I determine if they qualify as refugees and, afterward, whether or not they have cases for resettlement abroad.
This last part is based primarily on the degree to which they’ve been emotionally and physically traumatized by the conflict in their country of origin, and how their long-term physical and mental health is affected by their experiences. People who have turned suicidal or have obsessed themselves into heart disease get plus points for urgency.
When the interviews and writing are complete, I submit everything to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Then I wait, often for months, to hear back about whether my client has been referred for resettlement to an embassy or some other appropriate authority.
Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t, although more often than not it is the latter. Denied requests are always conveniently vague, so we never know exactly why one person was rejected and another was not. This makes it difficult to improve our approach to screening clients and writing cases, and ensures that the application process is muddier than it needs to be. Something that should be essential in this industry of crisis—a clarity of process that could help the system function efficiently and accept all the people it possibly could—is absent.
Then there is the notion of a quota. I quickly learned what that meant: a legal cap on the importation of tragedy set by countries that permit third-country resettlement (U.S., Canada, Australia, and a few others). Third country resettlement refers to the resettlement of refugees who’ve fled their country of origin to a second country, only to be met with a ‘lack of local integration prospects’ and so must be moved to a third. Meaning every single refugee in Egypt. So not only do we have to function inside of a system that moves so slow it may as well be frozen (in no small part because of its own self-imposed ambiguity) we also have more people screaming to leave Egypt than we have space for.
Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran
We tell most of our clients a brutal fact: they will most likely have to stay in Cairo, often under precarious circumstances. Perhaps their health is failing. This is not uncommon and is often the direct result of the tortures they’ve endured as survivors of conflict. Inevitably, proper care for their ailments is either too expensive or unavailable in Egypt. This is compounded by the reality that most refugees have little or no money.
Refugees in Egypt are not given citizenship. Without it they are legally barred from gainful employment. But neither can they leave the country to find work elsewhere because many don’t have passports. Even the ones that do are barred from travel because no country wants the responsibility of dealing with another refugee.
People think it’s hard to get a visa to travel to America. Try getting a visa for a Sudanese or Iraqi to anywhere with employment prospects. And they certainly can’t go home, since many face arrest, persecution, persistent death threats, and other circumstances that can hardly be imagined. After all, they left their countries to escape danger. The last thing they need is to go back.
So they are stuck, like bugs in honey, without a way to maintain the meager lives they’re living.
I’ve struggled most with this notion of a quota because it means that the elected officials of the richest and most powerful countries on Earth choose to set allowances on immigration before they address the need itself. That is, they make a choice to qualify tragedy by numbering it. We will accept this many people, from this country, for this calendar year. And no more.
The rest get left in Cairo, Amman, Khartoum, and countless other places where they remain unwelcome.
I’ve tried to bring their stories home via e-mails and phone calls. I’m often met with hesitation, silence, or rebuttal. After all, America didn’t start the conflict in Sudan. Or Eritrea. Or Ethiopia. And while America’s responsibility in Iraq is certainly more pronounced, it’s not just our problem. There was war and conflict there before we arrived. America didn’t rape or pillage or light anything on fire just to watch it burn.
In addition, the more refugees we bring to our country, the more liability and risk we bring with them. We have to pay for their services, which they most often cannot afford themselves. Even if a person is lucky enough to be resettled and somehow manages to scrape up a living in their new country on their own, it’s because they occupy a job that could have gone to a native resident.
Given the state of our economy and the political environment that surrounds it, these claims seem warranted. When refugees arrive in any country they are a financial and legal burden. They use resources and need jobs, education, and emotional and physical treatment. They haven’t paid taxes to our treasury, they were not born on our soil, and they rarely bring a relevant trade with them.
So when we, as a voting public, think about immigration reform and the lawmakers that lobby for and against it, we need to answer one question: When do we decide the quality of a human life is worth more than the dollar value we assign it?
Of course these people are strangers and they live so far away it’s easy to never see them. But when I speak to someone at home who is so opposed to my politics, I try to remind them of one thing. Refugees, like everyone else, are human and they deserve a reasonable opportunity to earn a life for themselves. They have friends, and families, and lovers. They have names. The quiet girl from my office is named Ashai, and she is from Darfur.
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14 Comments... join the discussion!
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This is so powerful, Ian, I am frustrated to just be sitting here in my apartment and sending a comment that is glaringly obvious…
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Thanks for the insights! Though I might suggest re-reading this as a call for immigration reform as opposed to immigration anarchy, and viewing Ashai as a good benchmark for what I’d call a refugee in a situation that isn’t durable, and thus warranting resettlement. And while 70,000 is a large number, I might suggest that it isn’t as large as the need that precedes it. I don’t think resettlement is the right option for every displaced person. But sometimes it’s the only option, and it’s unavailable because of politics and domestic sentiment.
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Thanks for the additionaly comments,
I do agree that more states should be engaged with the resettlement process and reexamine the criteria and numbers they use, I do think that true durable solutions need to be explored sur place, so to speak.
End to conflict, local solutions and support, voluntary repatriation when a conflict ends. These are all options that can be expanded and developed more before resettlement is used. Resettlement is the there is no protection or adequate assistance available to you here option. The final card to play. And much like when donor fatigue happens, if States took in larger and larger numbers of refugees i fear the backlash would be counterproductive. We already see some of these examples in europe and other places. Thanks for the continued work and writing.
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Good point. We can’t save the world… but should be able to see the forest for the trees at times.
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The questions in the first paragraph seem to me like “leading questions.”
And also the part “When she passed one hundred I said I didn’t want to know anymore” seems really disturbing to me. If someone is telling you their story, it has to be much more painful for them and it takes some courage. To say you don’t want to know…?
Also isn’t it United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (not Council)?↵ -
Yes, it is Commissioner and not Council. It’s a typo that is in the process of being changed. I, unfortunately, don’t have the ability to change it, as it is editor-access only.
And in regards to your comment, re: not wanting to know. Perhaps I should have used “need” instead of “want,” but I assure you that the refugees I interview are engaged respectfully and always with care. Translators help us deal with misunderstandings, which are inevitable.
Also, the process can be a very emotional one. Legal counsel, as well as clients, often take breaks or change topics as a way to break stress and calm the situation down. It’s often the best way to make sure people keep talking, even though it might seem contradictory.
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Also, about the “leading questions”: I don’t ask those to suggest to the client that she should respond in a certain way. I ask them because the answers to them are dreadfully relevant. And female refugees have a particularly tough time speaking to male legal counsels about rape. So sometimes they don’t even mention it unless you address it directly and in context (which is why most of my clients are men).
Resettlement requests are about details and facts, and we have to get them right. We can’t afford to leave anything out, and we can’t afford to assume our clients will just naturally tell us everything. We have to solicit the truth actively to get it.
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Thanks for your additional comments Ian! I guess I just see some contradiction in getting the facts and details, and telling someone you don’t want/need to hear anymore. However I do agree with many of the other viewpoints of the article. I have an MA in Peace Studies and focused on refugee/IDP rights. I’ve conducted some reseach in Kenya and Korea on these issues and know it can be very difficult to hear things people went through and that many of the policies in place fail in having a humane and compassionate perspective, as well as providing practical resolutions.
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Great article, very powerful. The last few lines really brought it home.
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Lev–
Thanks again for your insights. End to conflict is of course the primary goal. If I could ‘wish upon a star’ or something, of course that is what I’d pick. Unfortunately, conflict has always existed and I can’t imagine it will ever stop. There will always be refugees. It is easy to say, “Stop fighting” or “Let’s have no more war”, but how realistic is this as a durable solution for refugees?
And voluntary repatriation is of course the next best thing. Unfortunately, in most circumstances it’s not an option. Consider my Iraqi clients, who fled at various times and for various reasons. Even though the “war” is over, the country isn’t safe. And if we deemed it so, the sectarian violence is so deep anyway that many of my clients have received death threats from Iraq even though they’ve ran all the way to Cairo. So I can’t imagine telling one of them to go back to where they came from in the face of that. These conflicts take years and years and years. What do we do in the meantime?
As far as local solutions. I don’t mean to be a glass-half-empty kind of person, but Egypt, and many countries I have been in, can hardly support their own population, let alone refugees that don’t have citizenship. Of course we could rely on foreign funding. Unfortunately there is a tremendous amount of corruption in Egypt, and all over the world, and how much of that money can we expect to get into the hands of the people who need it?
I’m not a politician, or an economist, and I certainly didn’t study conflict resolution. But my work demands real solutions, and it demands them quickly. And most often it doesn’t happen.
I’m not so worried about America reflecting some of the problems of Europe. I was just in Paris, and it was lovely
What I’m saying is this: I will vote for immigration reform knowing full well that it will negatively impact our economy and, some would argue, our social structure. I will vote knowing the implications. I think we have a moral obligation to do so. To give up a little bit of our comforts so that someone far less fortunate than ourselves may be able to wake up one morning and, for once, know what it’s like to be free.
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Again, great comments.
Perhaps in disagreement, I think an end to conflict has to be the goal being driven toward. To say that conflict always exists and always will is accurate, but thats akin to say that certain countries will always be at war and it’s unrealistic to try and end them.
As far as voluntary repatriation goes, much like durable solutions and end to conflict, its a path, not the right one for everyone, but a possibility. many of the iraqi clients i’ve worked with who have been resettled in the west opted to return to iraqi and other places because they did not have any opportunities in the US. They had been architects and skilled workers in Iraqi… upon arriving in the US they had to find menial jobs and they weren’t willing to start from the bottom again. An understandable position, but one of the avenues where resettlement fails to live up to the expectations that so many people put on it.
Yes, Egypt is an awful place to be a refugee. Egypt made so many reservations to the ‘51 Convention and abdicated so much responsibility to the UNHCR that it’s next to useless. However there are still a number of groups and agencies not related to the government who are striving to assist refugees in place. I think expansion and support for those efforts is a much better ‘results based’ response than just resettling them.
To say that you are working so that refugees can have a chance to wake up free one morning is certainly an admirable goal. But most of the refugees i have worked with would rather wake up free and safe in their own country, than in the West.
I have no problem with immigration reform and the expansion of caps on resettlement. I just don’t see it as the larger durable solution that you do, I think.Loving the dialogue on your article.
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Lev–
Thanks again for writing. I think my point as far as ‘end of conflict’ is concerned, is that people–and I mean this globally, not in reference to a single country–can hardly produce peace, yet alone maintain it. Just as we are searching for durability, we too much search for a solution that is both timely and (this is key) possible.
I would love to be proven wrong in this regard. I would love to eat a piece of humble pie and swallow my words on this, but as it stands, I don’t think peace is either durable or realistic in the long term.
I’m not talking about individual conflicts, but conflict as a whole. Because what does it matter if we solve one refugee crisis if we just turn around and make another? And again, by ‘we’ I mean it globally.
Back to voluntary repatriation: many of my Iraqi clients are also skilled laborers, engineers, etc. And yes, some of them will find America is not the ‘land of opportunity’ they hoped it’d be. But for most of my clients–and I know this is a bit of an assumption–I think they’d rather be in a menial job in America than dead in Iraq. I suppose it comes down to personal experience on this. I just happen to see many clients that have had family killed in front of them, or have received numerous death threats. I have yet to see anyone opt to go back.
But then again, my job does not entail a lot of follow up. So perhaps years down the line they do. I would lying if I said I know for sure. We’ll chalk ‘voluntary repatriation’ up as the ideal solution, and sometimes a viable one. But I have my doubts about its reliability en mass enough to deal with the numbers. Although, there is the issue of time frame. Repatriation requires the end of conflict, in most circumstances. These modern wars we fight, they aren’t quick. And what about places like Sudan or Eritrea and Ethiopia? These aren’t really wars at all, just deep-rooted conflicts that go back to tribal ties, colonial boundaries, etc. Solving them is even harder, and even slower.
The question becomes: what do we do in the meantime?
Again, back to aid: I agree with you in spirit on funding private agencies, NGOs, and other groups that are involved in helping refugees where they’re at. But from personal experience, even in my small office where I knew everyone and judged them to be good, we had issues with where money came from and where it went. People take advantage of the system all the time. Before we can pump money into it and expect it to work better, we need to reform and regulate it. Otherwise it’s just wasting more money on the same problems we’ve known about forever: corruption, embezzlement, and even just negligence. These are not just political buzzwords. It happens all the time.
The problem with this is, how do we govern American money, or money from any country, when it’s pumped abroad to a country like Egypt, where we have no real jurisdiction, and the government is more concerned about itself than its people? I’m not a law student, and correct me if I’m wrong: but I don’t think we can do much about it.
Why not better fund American institutions, and better prepare our communities for refugees? Why not create jobs and housing and opportunity here, where we can govern it and regulate it?
Just an idea. It’s not perfect. I know that. But if there is a better option, one that works and is real and keeps people where they want to be, and keeps them safe, then by all means, tell me so I can jump on board. I will cheer harder for it than anyone.
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Of course by “we too much search for a solution that is timely…” I mean “we too must”.
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