Recently, along with about 80 other guests, I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Zahra Hamid Sulttan Al-Kabi, a social worker and Iraqi refugee who is living in Amman, Jordan, speak publicly in Eugene at the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts. Zahra spoke about the plight of Iraqis who have been displaced from their homes by warfare. From her lecture, I learned that in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and injured by violence, over 2 million are internally displaced within their own country, and millions more Iraqis are seeking refuge in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East.
As an Iraqi woman displaced from her homeland, Zahra is not accorded official refugee status in the country to which she has fled. Iraqi adults are not allowed to work in Jordan, and next year, Iraqi children will not be allowed to go to school.
It seems logical that the United States would support these millions of displaced Iraqis. Yet the U.S., unconscionably, has refused to provide large-scale assistance to these citizens. I urge you to support bills in Congress that, if passed, would enable larger numbers of Iraqis to settle in the U.S.: the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007 (H.R. 2265), and the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act (S. 1651). Congressman DeFazio is not yet a sponsor of the former bill. Please call or write to him and urge him to co-sponsor.
Jennifer M. Love
Eugene