TLP in the News: American Bar Association Journal Features TLP's Partnering Law Firms

The latest issue of the American Bar Association Journal has a cover story on Iraqi refugees and their advocates. The excellent article discusses the resettlement process with TLP's partnering law firms, Proskauer Rose, Holland and Knight, and Mayer Brown. Kirk Johnson, TLP's founder, is also interviewed.

Reading the article affirms the terribly long and arduous process for resettlement; a process that is rife with danger. The article mentions numerous pitfalls including being abducted by state security forces while in exile, the prohibitions on employment in Syria, and of course, the murderous crimes of anti-US militias.

Chris Nugent and Eric Blinderman, attorneys working for Iraqis on the list with the firms of Holland and Knight and Proskauer Rose respectively, related the difficulties of representing targeted Iraqis:

Nugent and Blinderman counsel Iraqis by cell and e-mail, sometimes using code in case a militia is monitoring a refugee’s communications. A militia or gang can get the hardware to trace communications for about $50,000.

While militias are often the main reason US-affiliated Iraqis seek resettlement, other obstacles stand between a visa and permanent exile. "Mike," a translator for the US Army who is currently on the list, discussed the negative stigma pinned to those who helped the US:

Mike says his Syrian UNHCR interviewer handed him a folder emblazoned with “Not eligible to resettle” for his paperwork. The interviewer was scornful of Mike’s work with Americans. Other refugees on Johnson’s list have accused UNHCR’s Syrian staffers of mocking Iraqi refugees as “Ameri­ca’s dogs” and, more seriously, of leaking Iraqi refugees’ whereabouts to militias.

For Iraqis who have worked for the US, not only are their lives at stake, but they are treated with contempt by the very people who are their to help them. In this seemingly friend-less situation, the tireless work of the lawyers, pro-staff, law students, case managers, and everyone else who advocates for these refugees, is even more crucial. Rarely have there been so many legal professionals dedicating so many hours to help with a specific humanitarian issue and their efforts are worth celebrating as they get closer to resettling the hundredth person from the list.

TLP in the news: Washington Post Article on Congressional Testimony

Walter Pincus featured TLP in a Washington Post article on Monday. Pincus discussed the struggles of streamlining the bureaucratic process to bring over Iraqi refugees despite maximum effort that is being expended. Congressional testimony from Wednesday's hearing in which TLP's Kirk Johnson and Iraqi refugees detailed frustrations of the process was highlighted:

Ibrahim [an Iraqi refugee who testified] said a new program, passed this year by Congress, opened up processing in Baghdad instead of requiring people to get to Syria or Jordan to be interviewed.

But, he added, the State Department coordinators in Baghdad are understaffed, don't have enough resources to process applications and require applicants to come inside the Green Zone -- though there are not enough staff members to escort them through checkpoints.

"This has led to a Catch-22. A mechanism for people to escape Iraq has been created, but only those with sufficient connections to enter the Green Zone can take advantage of it," he said.

TLP commends the Washington Post for bringing attention to the issue and would like to recognize the efforts of the small State department team working to process Iraqis through the Baghdad Embassy. As Johnson emphasized in his congressional testimony on Wednesday:

We have had very welcome and positive interaction...with the recently arrived refugee coordinator at the Baghdad embassy, who has been tasked with implementing the Kennedy legislation instruction to begin in-country processing for U.S. affiliated Iraqis.

Her efforts, and those of the very small team working with her, are without question commendable. We must not forget the harrowing circumstances in which they labor. Their laudable work on the ground, however, has not been accorded the resources necessary to successfully implement this legislation.

Furthermore, TLP has learned that the embassy's refugee coordinator and her the team has recently taken concrete steps to overcome some of the logistical pitfalls faced by Iraqis seeking interviews.

In his testimony, Johnson went on to clarify where the responsibility lies for effectively streamlining a successful processing effort:

[T]he State Department needs access, logistics and support to help the Iraqis that are in-country....Congress has expressed its intent. You guys have been trying to address this issue, but I think the responsibility relies with the president...I can't come to any other conclusion that this is a low priority or a non-priority from the White House. It's been a priority for Congress, but in the absence of any word from the president on this, I think that the bureaucracies don't have the force and the will from the president to act.

Visit the White House website and ask why nothing has been done or even said on an issue that affects our national security, moral standing, and leadership role in the world.

TLP on the Hill

On Wednesday, June 11, the congressional committee, the US Helsinki Commission chaired by Congressman Alcee Hastings and Senator Benjamin Cardin, hosted a hearing with The List Project. The testimony is available here and below are select quotations.

In reference to the personnel at the new in-country processing facility, enacted by the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act, founder of The List Project, Kirk Johnson, had this to say:

Their laudable work on the ground, however, has not been accorded the resources necessary to successfully implement this legislation. Iraqis are granted interviews but accessing those interviews is a Herculean challenge. Our lawyers have had to tap informal networks of colleagues working as contractors and federal employees in the Green Zone who do not work at the State Department but assist the process by escorting Iraqis through checkpoints and into the Palace. It is safe to say that without these connections that we retain due to our own service in Iraq, the Iraqis on the List would be unable to reach their interviews.

"Ibrahim," an Iraqi working for USAID who Kirk Johnson helped relocate to the US, had this to say:

USAID had Foreign Service National Committee that represented the Iraqi staff. I was a member of that committee. When the first Iraqis were killed because they worked for the United States, the FSN Committee asked the US to stop exposing us to needless dangers. For example, our identity was never protected. our photos and names were available on USAID websites, which anyone could access. Soon our photos, names and addresses were more public to Iraqis than the US effort to reconstruct Iraq.

TLP in the News: 60 Minutes Excerpt

On Sunday, May 18th, 60 Minutes profiled The List Project and interviewed its founder, Kirk Johnson. Below is an excerpt of their report:

TLP in the News: 60 Minutes on May 18, 2008

TLP founder Kirk Johnson will be featured on the next episode of 60 minutes, which is set to air on Sunday, May 18 at 7 p.m. EST. Scott Pelley will document the struggles faced by Iraqi allies whose assistance to US personnel has put their lives in jeopardy. As described on the 60 minutes website:

Thousands of Iraqis who helped the U.S. in Iraq as translators, office help and construction workers are now labeled collaborators by the insurgents. A young American, Kirk Johnson, is making a Herculean effort to help get them out of harm's way. Scott Pelley reports. Shawn Efran is the producer.

Check out the episode preview and be sure to spread the word.

TLP in the News: The Washington Post on Visa Quotas

The Washington Post recently reported on the State Department halt on processing visa applications for Iraqi translators due to a quota limit.

The halt is the latest obstacle for many of the several thousand translators who have worked for U.S. military units in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives and leaving their families vulnerable to retaliation from insurgents who see them as accomplices of American troops. More than 250 interpreters working for U.S. forces or their contractors have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Many American service members have worked to help their former translators gain a visa to come to the United States under a 2006 congressional program initially designed to admit 50 translators per year, a quota later increased to 500.

The article also quotes TLP's Kirk Johnson on the power of the president on the bureaucracy:

If this doesn't prove why it's President Bush's responsibility to whip these bureaucracies into shape, and why the best intentions of Congress can only nudge things, I don't know what else can," said Johnson, a former staffer with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Iraq. "Until the president weighs in, the bureaucracies will not solve this.

There are many more Iraqis who served as translators for the US, and who have worked with contractors, than the special visas currently allow. This narrow quota has recently been increased to 5,000 due to a recently passed bill that was signed by President Bush, however, its implementation will not take affect immediately. In the mean time, Iraqis who have risked their lives working for the US are shunned until the inertia-ridden bureaucracy implements the new quota.

TLP in the News: From the Christian Science Monitor

Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor wrote a story this week featuring TLP's Kirk Johnson. Here is an excerpt:

Johnson is from West Chicago: "Bush Country," he calls it. His parents twice voted for the president and support the war. But Johnson's efforts have shifted from trying to massage the bureaucracy to mustering public pressure on President Bush to address America's imperiled Iraqi employees.

"He's the only one that can save them quickly," says Johnson. He rattles off statistics of refugees evacuated on presidential orders – including Iraqis in 1996.

To read the rest of Ms. Carroll's piece on an average day in the life of TLP's founder, click here.

TLP in the News: An Iraqi Ally Adapts to Life in the US

This week a Houston Chronicle news article outlined the daunting process that Iraqi refugees must undertake just for the chance to gain US residency:

• Refugees outside of Iraq must register with the United Nations refugee agency.

• Refugees are given medical examinations by the U.N.

• Refugees are interviewed by U.N. workers to determine whether they have well-founded fears of persecution or if they committed war crimes.

• U.N. workers, after lengthy investigations, recommend refugees for resettlement in the U.S. About 14,000 have been referred so far.

• Refugees are directed to go to a U.S. Embassy for more interviews.

• Refugees are screened by U.S. personnel and by the International Organization for Migration. FBI agents and CIA officers review the reports.

• A Homeland Security Department worker interviews the Iraqis who have passed the FBI and CIA checks. About 5,600 interviews have been completed, U.S. officials say.

• Refugees selected for resettlement are fingerprinted, photographed and allowed to travel to the U.S.

• Refugees are re-interviewed by federal security personnel upon their arrival in the U.S.

While this blog has highlighted many of the challenges facing four million displaced Iraqis, the Chronicle article offers a glimpse into a rarely mentioned topic: struggles faced by the few Iraqi refugees who have made it to the United States. Ms. Media Al-Sewaili, whose name was included on one of the earliest lists that TLP founder Kirk Johnson presented to the State Department, escaped her war-torn country with her two children. The former UNICEF employee overcame bureaucratic red tape to come the US, but now faces new challenges:

Little things that Americans take for granted, like getting a driver's license, take huge swaths of al Sewaili's time, especially since she doesn't have a car and doesn't really know her way around the city.

She tried to enroll her 22-year-old son and her 20-year-old daughter into a college so they could continue their dentistry studies, but bureaucratic delays mean the two can't start until at least September. Both have found work as dental assistants. She is hunting for a job as an educational planner.

"We are losing time, we want to do things and catch up," said al Sewaili. "I want the children to continue their studies. They were both outstanding students in Iraq."

Al-Sewaili and other new arrivals are assisted by refugee organizations who strive to ensure they land on their feet. Still, these efforts are funded by State Department grants that expire after only 90 days. Congressional legislation that could increase assistance to Iraqi refugee arrivals is currently pending.

Article Roundup

George Packer continues to conscientiously write about the travails of Iraqi refugees and has mentioned The List Project’s very own Kirk Johnson in a recent blog post:

A few evenings ago, my friend Kirk Johnson stopped by with a man I’ll call Ibrahim, an Iraqi in his early thirties who had arrived in the U.S. earlier this month. Ibrahim’s story keeps getting worse before it gets better.
Toward the end of last year, while working for an American contractor, Ibrahim received a death threat from a co-worker who belonged to the Mahdi Army, and he decided to flee the country. Iraqis are less and less welcome in the Arab world, so he chose a dangerous, though increasingly common, way out: he paid a Swedish-Iraqi smuggler six thousand dollars up front to get him into Stockholm, where a cousin lives.
On the phone, Ibrahim sounded furious, bewildered, despairing—and determined. “Is it possible, is it possible?” he said over the static-filled connection. “I used to be manager of a procurement office of USAID. I am nothing now, and why? Because I trusted the U.S. When you are a refugee, it’s a very terrible feeling. You feel nobody knows about you, nobody cares about you.”

Packer had indicated that he will continue Ibrahim's story on his blog so keep an eye out for that. Furthermore, in a recent spate of articles on Iraqi refugees and U.S. policy towards them, Slate has another article arguing that not only does the U.S. have a moral responsibility to admit thousands of Iraqi refugees into the country, but that robust resettlement will also aid America’s strategic interests:

As with the Palestinian problem, Iraq's refugees could generate numerous regional crises. Large refugee flows can overstrain the economies and even change the demographic makeup of small or weak states, upsetting what is already a delicate political balance. One million Iraqi refugees is a substantial addition to Jordan's population of less than 6 million.

Not only, this, but another interesting piece relates of growing class and economic tensions in Jordan due to the presence of Iraqi refugees:

Hostility towards them easily translates into a general dislike of all Iraqis in Jordan, regardless of whether they are wealthy or not. "I'll give you an example — if an Iraqi comes to my stall he won't ask the price, he'll just start filling his bag," says Mohammed Ro'ud, a greengrocer in Amman's Boukari street market. "This is why the prices of flats are also going up: they don't bargain, they just pay cash right away, and ordinary Jordanians can't afford to do that."

The article also states that while poor Iraqis also constitute part of the refugee population in Jordan, most poor refugees have settled in Syria where the economy is straining under the added weight of approximately 1.5 million Iraqi refugees. The Economist comments on the situation and also explains new Syrian regulations limiting refugee admittances:

The UNHCR has managed to register only 135,000 refugees, a fraction of those who have arrived. And they are still trickling in, despite new rules that have in effect closed the border. Only certain favoured categories of applicants, such as lorry drivers, businessmen, academics and engineers, are now being allowed in, with occasional exceptions for the sick.

Must read: "The Guam Option"

The New Yorker's George Packer continues his diligent coverage of the Iraqi refugee crisis, particularly as it pertains to America's Iraqi allies. In his most recent post on the subject, he outlines what he calls "The Guam Option":

In the fall of 1996, the U.S. military evacuated more than six thousand Iraqis—Kurds and others who had worked with American agencies in the north, and whose lives were directly threatened by Saddam’s army—halfway across the world to Guam. There they were screened, processed for asylum, and assigned sponsors in an effort that involved more than a thousand American soldiers and civilians. Almost all of the evacuees ended up Stateside within seven months. Major General John Dallager, the Joint Task Force commander of Operation Pacific Haven, said, “Our success will undoubtedly be a role model for future humanitarian efforts.”

Undoubtedly... Recently, some conscience-stricken American officials have privately begun to ask why the model of Operation Pacific Haven can’t be emulated today. Flying Iraqis to Guam would solve every problem, real and invented, that the Administration claims is holding up resettlement: the inability of Homeland Security interviewers to meet with refugees in Syria; the near-impossibility of Iraqis getting into neighboring countries; the supposed security concerns that prevent the U.S. from screening Iraqis inside Iraq. With the Guam option, none of this would matter.

...In a single day. fewer than a dozen planes could rescue all of the eight hundred Iraqis on Kirk Johnson’s list. And Guam has U.S.-run facilities that can house large numbers of refugees. An airlift to Guam would not be cheap, and part of the cost would be enormous publicity. But it’s the obvious answer. Unless bad P.R., with echoes of the fall of Saigon, is the Administration’s real concern, there isn’t a single persuasive argument, practical or principled, against it.

Slate's Fred Kaplan endorses the plan (and also cites The List Project):

George Packer, the New Yorker writer who first drew attention to this crisis and who continues to shame officials for not doing more to resolve it, proposed a solution in his blog last week. The idea is eminently practical and logically unassailable—so much so that if Bush and his top aides don't take him up on it, there can be only one explanation: They simply don't want to.

TLP In The News: From Mother Jones

"Kirk Johnson: Of the Iraqis who are currently working at the U.S. embassy, none of them whom I've spoken with feel like they are going to be taken care of. There was a Christian couple that was killed about four months ago. The husband was a senior translator; his wife also worked in the embassy for years. He was kidnapped. When the wife went to pay the ransom, they killed both of them. Every killing is succeeded by a wave of Iraqis leaving because the presumption is that any U.S. government employee who was kidnapped was tortured and gave the names of other Iraqis who were working with them.

There is no way for Iraqis in country to get U.S. visas. If an Iraqi faces a death threat, he must follow assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration Ellen Sauerbrey's advice and forge his way into Jordan or Syria and stand outside of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees offices. Somebody who shows up at UNHCR in Damascus won't get an interview until spring 2008. And that's just one of three interviews where they're asked roughly the same questions. Even if they get an American visa, they have to go back to Iraq and then come back when it's ready. It's appallingly slow and labyrinthine...

If you don't step back from the situation and remember that we have done it before, [for example] 10, 15 years or so ago with 14,000 ethnic Albanians. Put them on C-130s and process them all on American military bases. Fly them here and process them here. You can forget that this is what presidents are here for and this is what leadership means. If you cut through this mountain of bureaucracies through leadership and say, "This is what we have to do."

Click here for full interview.

TLP In The News: Listen to Kirk Johnson on NPR

Kirk Johnson, was featured on National Public Radio's "Here and Now" program on 10/18/2007. Click here to listen.