EVERETT — Six people came to Everett.
It’s all that’s left of their family, as far as they know. In many areas of Iraq, death is the punishment for helping U.S. troops, and the Hasan family made money selling refrigerators and air conditioners to soldiers.
Terrorists barged into their home one evening during dinner. They dragged one brother away. He wound up dead in a Baghdad morgue. Their father, the man who inched carefully into the crowded morgue (“like sardines in a can,” another brother described) to find the body, never made it home.
The family had a choice: stay in the Middle East, where the terrorists who killed their brother, and possibly their father, might find them, or accept an offer from the U.S. to move here as refugees.
They moved.
Now the family is desperate, said Ali Hasan, 30, one of five adult children who arrived in Everett with their mother this year.
“We can’t find jobs,” he said. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
Hasan was an English teacher in Baghdad. His brother and sisters also speak English. They thought they’d have an easier time than most who come to the U.S., but the global economic crisis has pushed them out of the hiring pool at places that once hired refugees.
Jobs cleaning buildings, stocking grocery store shelves and working in factory lines have either disappeared or been snatched up by local people who have been laid off.
The Hasan family must find work by October. That’s when their refugee cash assistance, just $359 per month per single adult, runs out. Families with children can apply for help through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, but single adults don’t have any other options.
“My heart goes out to them, but we’re tied by federal laws,” said Tom Medina, director of Washington state’s refugee resettlement program. “This economy is so tight that they’re competing with mainstream Americans for jobs.”
The Hasans came to the U.S. as part of a federal program to resettle 12,000 Iraqis whose lives are at risk as long as they stay in the Middle East. It’s not clear how many Iraqi refugees will be resettled in Washington, but the state may be a prime destination because a large Iraqi community already exists here. Hundreds of Iraqis live in northeast Everett, many of whom came to the U.S. about 15 years ago after they protested against Saddam Hussein following Operation Desert Storm.
Nearly 100 Iraqis have arrived in Washington since the 2009 fiscal year began in October, Medina said. The state is likely to receive about 100 more before the end of the year. About 220 Iraqis arrived in 2008, he said.
The state is also receiving refugees from Bhutan, Burma, Ukraine, east Africa and other regions.
The flailing job market is a disorienting shock for many new arrivals, especially those who come to the U.S. with Hollywood-fueled visions of the classic American dream: a car, a house and a lucrative job.
“Some have expectations that are pretty high,” said Bob Johnson, director of the International Rescue Committee’s Seattle office.
Iraqis awarded refugee status in connection with U.S. military activity in their country are having a particularly difficult time adjusting their expectations to their options here, Johnson said. They tend to have more education than previous groups, and many have risked their lives as interpreters or in other key positions for U.S. troops. When they come to the U.S. only to struggle, many feel as though their sacrifices are being ignored.
Another problem is that many refugees are getting bad information, said Van Dinh Kuno, director of Snohomish County’s Refugee and Immigrant Forum.
Local churches and other groups often volunteer to help “sponsor” refugees, offering furniture and other supplies and help getting accustomed to everyday life. Sponsors can complicate a job search if they think a refugee is entitled to a better job than is available.
“These refugees are getting mixed information when they have someone telling them they’ll have no problem finding a job for $16, $17, $18 an hour,” Kuno said. “But we’re saying, ‘Take any job. Just get your foot in the door, and do whatever you need to do to survive.’”
That means refugees should accept, if necessary, an $8.55 per hour job bagging groceries, changing sheets at a motel or even caring for medical test animals, as some Bhutanese refugees are doing, Kuno said.
People who were highly educated in their own countries often must start on the lowest rung of the job ladder here, but they are statistically most likely to climb that ladder quickly, Kuno said. Eighty percent of educated refugees find a job similar to the one they held in their own country within five years, she said.
The tight job market means it could take those refugees more than five years to work their way back to their chosen professions.
It’s unlikely that Ali Hasan will find a job teaching English. His other skills include fluent Arabic, expertise in Sunni-Shia differences, and street smarts in war zones. Hasan said he and his family have walked miles from their north Everett home, applying for jobs at every business along the way. They don’t have a car, and they’re hesitant to use their cash on bus fares. And every day, October is a little closer.
“Then, they cut everything,” Hasan said.
Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422, kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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