Iraqi Refugees in Egypt

“If you need help with it, just ask Abu Layla,” Amir told me.

Later, responding to a different question, he added, “Abu Layla should know where it is.”

And even later, “When you’re finished, put it in Abu Layla’s box."

All of which would have been helpful information, but I didn’t know who Abu Layla was. (By the way, names have been changed because, who knows?) I was too embarassed to ask, since everyone else seemed to know. However, by the end of the day I needed to know and approached our Iraqi office manager, Malik. "Malik, Amir keeps talking about Abu Layla. Who is that?"

The office manager is a stout, balding man who always dresses in trousers and an ironed polo shirt and sports a pair of large, gold-framed engineer-style glasses that I secretly covet. They have thick lenses and are super-retro-cool. They look like those worn by Walt in “Breaking Bad.” I thought about all of this as he grinned mischievously. “Jonathan,” he put a hand on my shoulder and laughed good-naturedly, “Abu Layla is me."

And so I had another embarassing lesson in Arabic culture. “Abu Shada” means father of Shada, and Iraqi adults are often called with reference to their first-born children.

Malik is a helpful and attentive office manager, and genial (he didn’t laugh at me too much). He is also a refugee from Iraq (most of the staff at the office are refugees). He speaks very good English, which has been common with my Iraqi clients, though with none of my African clients. And, of course, Iraqis speak Arabic, while Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans do not (Sudanese do, for the most part).

Some of these Iraqi refugees government jobs and perhaps even joined the Ba’ath Party (which was often necessary to get a promotion if you worked for the government), which made them targets after Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed under the weight of U.S. bombs. Others aided or worked for American or Multi-National Forces, or translated for a U.S. media company, and were endangered because of their association with Westerners. Most are well-educated, middle-class folks, or at least they were back home. Which is to say that, for the most part, they have an easier time than other refugees in Egypt, but their lives here might be a far cry from what they had in Iraq. (This also means that Iraq is losing a lot of its educated professionals.

Well over two million Iraqis have fled their country since Hussein was deposed in 2003, and many others have been displaced internally. Of those who left, many have gone to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. A smaller number went to Egypt, but this is a still a lot of people: there are estimates of 150,000 as of September 2008, and it’s surely increased since then. I’ve heard reports of people returning; after all, it’s not nearly as dangerous as it was a few years back. But violence continues in Iraq (28 people, including an MP, were killed at a mosque bombing on Saturday) and for many of these refugees, it is not safe to go back now.

Even for those with a middle-class background, being a foreigner is difficult in Egyt. For the most part, Iraqis are not legally permitted to work. Doctors, engineers, it makes no difference. They cannot enroll in public schools, so expensive private institutions are their only option. Many are drawing from dwindling savings accounts. Some have substantial government pensions, but Egypt does not allow these accounts to be transferred in-country, unlike the policies of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Many feel unwelcome in Egypt. And the revolution, by creating instability and by undermining the authority of the police, has unnerved many of the Iraqis I’ve spoken to. This may be why, according to the accounts I’ve heard, the number of Iraqis applying for resettlement is increasing.

Many apply to the quote-unquote normal refugee resettlement program of the UNHCR; others apply directly to a country’s immigration authority, for instance if they have a close relative who lives there and is willing to sponsor them. But those who fled Iraq because they worked with Americans are eligible to apply to the Direct Access Program (DAP). DAP is supposed to make it easier for these Iraqis to apply for resettlement to the US, for instance by not requiring a referral from the UNHCR or other agency. Iraqis who worked with Americans for more than one year (and were thusly endangered and had to flee, of course) can also apply for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

These are very different than the UNHCR resettlement mechanism. Eligibility for the UNHCR program is based on vulnerability in the country of refuge, whereas DAP and SIV criteria don’t address that at all. They’re almost merit-based programs; the key to assembling an application is getting proof that the applicant did in fact work for the American military, or USAID, or whoever. Of course, they must have been targeted because of this association, as well, but that's not usually hard to prove. Stories of black Xs painted on doors and bullets in envelopes are all too common.

The process itself is fairly complex, which is one reason that many have not applied. Some (by now outdated, surely) stats I read reported that only 20,000 applications had been received, though 150,000 Iraqis are eligible for either DAP or SIV. Of those 20,000, only 4,500 or so had been resettled. There is a huge backlog of SIV applications waiting on approval from the US Chief of Mission; this step alone often takes more than a year. Both DAP and SIV require the applicant to provide documentation of their employment by USG or other eligible organizations, which they may not have. (In some cases, the USG insists on copies of contracts to which it is itself a party! The idea that it doesn’t have a copy already is unsettling.) These and other bureaucratic issues seem mundane enough, but since this is a program for people who may still be in mortal danger, such delays are very important. Consider that some people are applying while still in Iraq, where simply approaching the US Embassy in the Green Zone might not be safe. NYT ran an article about delays in the SIV program earlier this month, though I don’t think this issue gets a lot of media attention on the whole.

Yes, people actually flee TO Egypt

By 10 AM it’s hot enough that my forehead is shiny with sweat after walking just a couple of blocks. Why did I come to Egypt during the summer?, I ask myself for the umpteenth time. The Cairene sun is already high in the sky, and Ramsis Street is thick with traffic. Cairo is notorious for its traffic - too many cars, too few rules - but from my pedestrian’s perspective, the more jammed the better. It’s easier to zig-zag between cars that are inching, rather than roaring, down the road.

It’s relatively quiet behind the dusty iron gates of St. Andrews Refugee Services. There’s no sign, but the church steeple is visible from the street. There’s another church building across the way, however, and that’s where I was directed my first day, when all I could do to ask for directions was to make a cross with my fingers. I can still hear the din of traffic and the shouts from the informal microbus station across the street, the drivers yelling out their destinations to passersby. But a few trees - there are too few trees in downtown Cairo - shield the courtyard somewhat from the sun and the sound. In any event, as soon as I’m inside the small office, I plop myself directly under the air conditioner, the buzz of which drowns out everything else. I wasn’t in the office during the last protest outside the High Court building, which is just across the square, Midan el-Esaaf, but if I was, I might not have heard it.

I’ve arrived just as our office officially opens. Two Iraqi staff are checking over the day’s schedule and making some tea, spooning heaps of sugar into the small glasses of Lipton. I join them, enjoying the emptiness of the office. Soon the small space will be packed: interns hunched over laptops or interviewing clients, interpreters translating documents on the table in the tiny kitchen, and computer power cables everywhere. Several times a day we play a version of musical chairs, shuffling between tables when someone has an appointment with a client.

The office has been busier than usual, I've been told. Things shut down for a while during the revolution. Even when there weren’t clouds of tear gas floating by, the unstable situation counseled against asking clients to make the trek into Downtown. Intake request forms are still piled high, and despite the pace of work we haven’t seemed make much of a dent.

It’s not clear if the flow of new refugees entering Egypt slowed down due to the revolution (even someone fleeing violence in Sudan, for instance, might think twice about going to Cairo when there are tanks in the streets). It’s not clear how many refugees there are in Egypt, for that matter; the figure changes from one report to another. The UN says 50,000, others say 200,000. Sudanese comprise a large portion, as well as Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Iraqis. My own clients are Somali and Iraqi, as it happens. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m working at the Resettlement Legal Assistance Project (RLAP) at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services. St. Andrew’s has been around for a while and has several programs, including a school teaching a Sudanese curriculum, and a psychosocial services office. RLAP is a much younger entity. It began in 2008 as the Iraqi Information Office, and dealt specifically with the growing number of Iraqis who had fled the violence in their home country. Presently, the client base is broader and the mission is more focused. RLAP assists refugees in Egypt - from any country - to apply for resettlement to a third country (meaning, neither their country of origin nor Egypt).

“Refugee” is a term of art referring to someone who fled their country of domicile because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their membership in at least one of five enumerated categories: race, religion, national origin, social group, and political opinion. Ideally, having fled they can enjoy a quote-unquote “durable solution,” but this is not always the case.

Cairo is a big, crowded city - the "greater metropolitan area" holds over 15 million - with high unemployment and poverty rates. I don’t want to imagine what would happen were the government to discontinue its long-standing subsidies on staple products - rice, cooking oil, petrol, and so forth. Being poor in Cairo, and most refugees in Cairo - excluding the Iraqis, who I’ll discuss more in another post - are poor, is tough. It’s even tougher if you’re seen and treated as an outsider, don’t have many legal rights, and don’t speak Arabic (while Sudanese speak Arabic, many Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans do not).

In general, refugees in Egypt cannot work legally (and given the unemployment figures, it would be hard to find a job anyway), so are dependent on disbursements from Caritas and other organizations to pay for rent and groceries. They can’t go to public school (Egypt is signatory to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but exempted itself from the requirement to provide elementary education same as nationals), and neither do most have the means to pay for private education. Couple this with the antipathy many refugees face on the streets of Cairo, and it’s no mystery why many hope to live in the U.S. or Canada or Sweden, or whichever country will have them.

Most are not resettled. Applications go to the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), which evaluates them and calls in some applicants for interviews, a number of which may eventually be referred for resettlement. The UN's criteria require that an applicant's situation be particularly bad (viz, not a "durable solution") in certain defined ways: a need for legal or physical protection, suffering from the lingering effects of violence or torture in your country of origin, a serious medical condition that cannot be treated in the present location, and so forth. The list seemed fairly comprehensive to my eyes when I first read it in preparation for this summer. I hadn't worked on refugee issues before, so I didn’t know what the list doesn’t cover, nor how large the gap is between the words in the UNHCR resettlement handbook and the reality. If you’re a Somali woman who is verbally, even physically harassed by men on the street every time you leave your apartment, you’re probably not eligible. If you come home late one night and are raped, you might have a chance, but the odds aren't good. If you decide to report that rape to the police and they refuse to help you, tell you it was your own fault, and throw you out of the station, you’ll have an even better shot. Before that, the resettlement door is closed to you.

The bar is set pretty high. Only 17 countries allow refugees to be resettled within their borders, though a large proportion - somewhere around 75%, though it varies year to year - go to a single nation: the United States. Resettling refugees who are often destitute (having fled their homes and possessions) and in need of significant assistance to acclimate to a different culture and language, is a financial burden as well as a political one, and there’s little pressure to accept more. The UNHCR estimates that this year it will only consider 3,600 refugees in Egypt for resettlement, and will probably only provide a resettlement referral for 900.

In this situation, a vital part of my job has been to quickly assess the strength of a potential client’s case and, sadly, to turn them away if they don’t have a shot. The office is small and more intake requests are added to the pile every day. Meanwhile, the violence that drove people from their homes in the first place continues. War did not end with the birth of South Sudan, and people are still hiding out in caves in the Nuba Mountains to avoid the northern government’s bombing sorties. Somalia’s officially recognized government controls only a few square blocks of Mogadishu, while militias hold sway in the rest of the country. The conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains unresolved. Iraq is shaken by more bombings all too often. For most refugees in Egypt, it will not be safe to return in the foreseeable future. Given the odds for resettlement, the vast majority must make Cairo their home for a long time to come.

Those whose story might fit into the categories recognized by the UN are taken on as clients. My job has been to interview those clients, teasing out their histories, and then write them up in a way that will persuade the UN of their eligibility. This is easier said than done, especially given the cultural and linguistic differences between myself and the clients. I must interview all of my African clients through an interpreter, and if the testimony differs from what the client says if they're called in for an interview, they could be deemed unbelievable by UN interviewers trained to sniff out fraudulent applicants. A lot of details are needed to write a compelling application, so experiences and events are rehashed several times, and sometimes new information is gleaned each time. Sometimes the story is revised in the retelling, which makes me nervous even if the new information strengthens the client's case.


Several more staff have arrived by now, and I’ve moved my computer once already to cede my prime real estate under the aircon to someone with a client. Soon one of my own clients will be here to review her testimony and verify the timeline of atrocities that makes her case viable, and I’ll need to shoo away my fellow interns, whose laptops now share the small table with mine. Back to work.

Summer's End

להתראות, ישראל!
(translation: see you later, Israel!)

My summer at the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv has come to an end, and I am back in New York after two and a half months away. It's nice to be home but I miss Israel so much. My last few days were a whirlwind of activity – the office was still packed every day with migrant workers applying for naturalization for their children from the moment we opened our doors until the last volunteer left. We had crayons and clay and children's books scattered all over the room, and it was slightly hard to focus on our work with the sound of babies crying and children yelling and running around. What was most interesting for me was that no matter what country their parents were from – the Philippines, Ecuador, Nigeria, etc – all the children played in Hebrew. One of the requirements for achieving citizenship was that they attend public school, so these kids are used to making friends and playing games in a language that many of their parents don't know.

My last project in the prison was working with a Somalian man named Akiba (who, at only 20, seemed even younger than his age) who was trying to apply for asylum in Australia. I mentioned him in one of my last posts. Anyway, the process was complicated by the fact that the application required 8 passport photos and he did not even have one, and we weren't allowed to bring cameras into the prison. Eventually, by waiting until the most helpful guard was on duty and then asking him for a printed copy of the photo that they had on file of Akiba, I was able to take the photo out of the prison and make copies on photo paper, which hopefully were professional enough for the Australian government. We spent a few afternoons together carefully filling out the application, and Akiba's last request of me before I left Israel was to ask whether I could make him an email address.

“Sure,” I said, “It's actually very easy. What name do you want?”

He asked me to make him an account with the user name “2pac no die.” Turns out Tupac Shakur is huge in Somalia – who knew? We're keeping in touch now through his new email account, and he signs all of his emails as 2pac Akiba.

I'm definitely missing many of the people I met in Israel, both from the detention center and outside. I even miss the language, though I spent the whole summer struggling with it. Between the staff and volunteers at the Hotline and the friends I made and strengthened in Israel, the summer was never boring and I had an amazing time. I'm so glad I went. I learned so much from some incredible people, and I couldn't have imagined a better way to spend my summer. Thanks so much to the Leitner center and to Jim Leitner for allowing us the opportunity to do this work!




Left: Learning to make Eritrean bread (Injera) from Eritrean refugees who opened a restaurant near the Tel Aviv bus station.










Right: Lafa-bread bakers in the Old City of Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate.

Summer is Speeding By

Such busy weeks, I can hardly believe another one has passed.  This week at the Hotline for Migrant Workers we're saying a lot of goodbyes: to Abigail, my fellow legal intern, who is returning to Vancouver; to the head of the organization, who is stepping down after several years; and to two of the teenagers who conducted their national service as volunteers here instead of participating in the Israeli army.  Usually you need more than the desire to choose this alternative route – some national service volunteers get out of the army by proving that they are pacifists or too religious to serve.  The three volunteers in the office this summer have been amazing help, and it will definitely be sad to see everyone go.

In order to make sure that we were in the office for a goodbye party yesterday, Abigail and I went to the prison at 7 am instead of the afternoon as usual.  Unfortunately, the guards were not happy with our early arrival, and almost refused to let us enter.  Eventually we found one department where the guards were more laid back, and were willing to let one or two prisoners out to talk to us as long as we requested them by name.  One of the prisoners wanted to apply for asylum to Australia, and had a copy of the form but didn't know how to fill it out because it was in complicated English, so I was glad that I was able to help.  (It definitely made me think of the work Kelly's doing in New Zealand).

Usually when we get to the prison, all the detainees are out in the yard, a small area with four picnic tables, a fridge and a sink.  In one of the departments, the yard also has a ping-pong table.  It isn't really “outside,” more like an enclosed space with sunlight streaming down, although it is cooler and breezier than the stuffy cells.  Each cell has anywhere from six to sixteen people in bunk beds, with very little extra room to move around.  What we've learned so far from conducting interviews is that during the day the only thing to do is lie in bed and watch television.  There are no books, no educational materials or classes, no music, and no events of any kind.  Prisoners can hold onto their cell phones as long as they are basic, with no internet or camera, and no mp3 capabilities.  They're “outside” for about 5 or 6 hours each day.  This time, most of the prisoners were still in their cells, and it was a much different experience sitting in the deserted, dusty yard, with just one other prisoner.    

Next week, I'm planning to visit the detention center in the South of Israel, close to the border with Egypt.  This is where most refugees who are discovered crossing the border are brought, while their identities are checked.  There is not enough space in the building for prisoners, so there is a tent city set up outside.  I'll write more about this once I see it, but I'm anticipating a very long and difficult day.  

In the meantime, after last week's post, I've been trying to see the nicer side of Israel.  On Friday, two of the other interns and I visited Bethlehem for a day of letting ourselves be normal tourists.  We were in the city during Friday noon prayers and heard the sermon (although only one of us understands any Arabic) and then visited the Church of the Nativity.  Then I spent shabbat (the sabbath) in Jerusalem, which was beautiful and very relaxing.  On Sunday, I participated in a photography competition in the Old City of Jerusalem, and tomorrow, I'm going to see the opera, Carmen, being performed for free in a park in North Tel Aviv.  I've also been noticing the simple day-to-day things about Israel that I admire, such as the fact that every building has a solar water-heater on its roof, and several main streets have bike lanes packed with bicycles.  Israel is also the only country that had more trees in 2000 than in 1900.  The whole country is very conscious of conserving water, as well, since water leads to so many of the region's conflicts.  Every toilet even has two handles – one handle only flushes a little bit, to save water.  

Another positive development is that the Knesset (Israel's parliament) is expected to pass a bill in the near future that would give citizenship – actual, full citizenship – to the children of migrant workers who have grown up here and attended Israeli schools, as long as they entered Israel legally.  It's similar to the DREAM act in the USA that Obama mentioned in his July 1 speech about immigration, that still hasn't passed after many years in Congress.  One problem with Israel's version is that it doesn't extend citizenship to older siblings who came after finishing schooling, only to small children, and their guardians receive residency, not full citizenship.  And the ministers of the Knesset (MKs) have thus far refused to say exactly what will happen to the children of migrant workers who don't get citizenship – until now, they have never detained these children (unlike, for example, the USA and Canada, which I'm learning about).  We're hoping that the government doesn't start to detain children once this chance for becoming legal passes.  The bill doesn't automatically give the eligible families citizenship – they must apply, and because of this, we are going to be VERY busy.  I'm glad that I'll still be around to help, because the Hotline for Migrant Workers is going to be packed.  We're already seeing many more small children around the office than usual.  More updates on this soon!

Update from the Hotline for Migrant Workers

שלום לכולם!
Last week, another intern and I went with a lawyer from the legal department to a hearing at a courthouse in Petah Tikva. The case had to do with a new “unwritten policy” of the Ministry of the Interior regarding migrant workers. The policy is that if a migrant worker marries another migrant worker, or gets pregnant, then the worker's visa is canceled and he or she is deported. The client that the Hotline was representing, with the help of ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel), was a nearly eight-months-pregnant woman who had recently been released from a detention center (with our help). Now, we were arguing that she should be given a visa that lasts at least three months from the due date, so that she can get health benefits and receive medical care here. The lawyer for the state – who, by the way, seemed slightly inexperienced – argued that she should only be given a visa up until her deportation hearing. The judge, who was more argumentative than either of the lawyers, kept talking over the government lawyer and saying things like “if you didn't always postpone the hearings another two weeks, another two weeks, then maybe this would already be solved, but I'm not going to deport a woman about to go into labor!”

Needless to say, the lawyer for the state failed her case and our client can stay. Unfortunately, it seems like the unwritten policy is still in force unless we can get a higher court to strike it down, or the Knesset (parliament) to specifically protect migrant workers against something like this happening again. In Israel, the current ministers of the Knesset lean toward the right, but the Supreme Court is a holdout for the liberals (kind of the opposite of the USA) so we usually have better luck with judges.

One funny thing about the day was the way people dressed. In Israel, almost no one wears suits, ever. People wear crocs to weddings. But in court, the lawyers are supposed to wear a suit and tie under a formal black robe that looks almost like a graduation gown. However, since no one really cares for formality, one of the lawyers was wearing dark jeans under his robe, and none of the lawyers actually wore suits. (After all, as one pointed out, you can't really tell with the robe on top – and it's hot out!)

On Thursday, the other legal intern and I, plus a group of 6 other future volunteers, got trained to visit the detention center near Tel Aviv and to interview asylum seekers and migrant workers who are housed there while the government decides what their status is. This Thursday, we're all going down to the detention center together for our first interviewing session – so I'll write more about all this after we go!

In the mean time, I'm still enjoying my time here, aside from the ridiculous heat and humidity. (Today it's 40ºC although probably no competition with those of you who are even closer to the equator). This week I'm visiting the Nalagaat center, a non-profit organization that provides a stage for blind and deaf actors and has an attached restaurant where patrons are served food in total pitch-black darkness. (http://www.nalagaat.org.il/home.php) Can't wait!

L'hitraot! (See you later!)
-Laura

First full week in Tel Aviv

I just finished my first week at the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel (hotline.org.il). The Hotline for Migrant Workers does much more than answer phone calls from migrant workers - their main mission is (a) promoting the rights of undocumented migrant workers and refugees and (b) eliminating trafficking in persons in Israel. They also have been working a lot recently on behalf of asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, to get them refugee status.

So far, I'm having a great time in Israel and at work! Aside from the recent political controversy, my first few days were restful and I have been exploring the city and getting acclimated here. I went to a giant Hebrew book fair, the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade (right), and wandered the marketplaces in Tel Aviv and Yafo.

My first night out in Tel Aviv, fliers for prostitutes were left in the windows of my friend's car. I had heard of this but never seen it before - it's illegal in Israel to advertise sexual services in newspapers (partly thanks to the work of the Hotline for Migrant Workers) but it's still allowed when the ad is separate from other materials. (right). Prostitution itself is no longer a crime in Israel, according to my supervisor - the women who are discovered in sex work are given training and help, not treated as criminals. Brothels, however, and the pimps and traffickers that run them, are outlawed. Seeing the fliers made me feel dismayed but also gave me more conviction - there are some major societal problems in Israel and I want to help solve them while I'm here (as much as I can).

One thing I learned that made me proud of our own government is that until the 2000s, trafficking in Israel was rampant and barely mentioned in Israeli law. Then the US State Dept. started classifying countries in three tiers according to the way they dealt with trafficking in their territory, and Israel was in the bottom tier, threatening their U.S. aid. Because of this threat, the Israeli government severely cracked down on human trafficking and raided many of the brothels in South Tel Aviv which were only a few blocks from where our office is located.

A sad thing about working in the office is the constant stream of migrant workers and asylum seekers who call and visit, and often the other employees have to explain to them that their hopes to stay in Israel or get a relative or friend released from a detention center are unlikely at best. Many people call the Hotline from prison, and sometimes after the legal department here spends all this time on their case, an unsympathetic judge will declare that it's really not that dangerous in their home county after all, and order a deportation procedure. Israel, which has been the destination of several thousand refugees in recent years, does not have a workable system in place for granting asylum, and many of these refugees have ended up in in detention centers near Tel Aviv or near the Israel-Egyptian border. Sometimes groups of refugees reach the Israeli border and are sent back through the Sinai desert that they just traveled through - and worse, to face the Egyptian border guards who have a policy of shooting refugees to stop them from reaching the border. (link)

Next week I'm going with one of the two lawyers who work here to court to watch his argument for a client who is seeking asylum status, and then on Thursday several other volunteers and I will be trained to interview migrant workers and asylum seekers in a detention center. The goal is to construct a case for them to stay or be released, and sometimes hopefully we will be able to find representative cases that will be useful for changing the law as a whole.

I am learning SO much here - not just about Israeli law and migrant workers but about the political situation in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan (among other countries) and the systems in place for migrant workers in many other places around the world, which we are going to put together as a potential model for revising the Israeli system. Looking forward to the next two months!