I spent much of the day today – Easter Sunday – with a family of refugees from Iraq. They, like 750,000 others who have fled from Iraq, are living in Jordan illegally. They are among the minority of Christian Iraqis, but with little money, Easter mass at a small Latin church in Amman was followed only by a some sweet tea and cookies. There was no Easter meal with the family.
We have an assumption in America that people choose to break the law. That is true, I believe. But there are times when the choice is made for you – when your own life or that of your family depends on what choice you make.
For the vast majority of the refugees living in Jordan, like Habib, the man with whom I spent the day, that choice was no less stark. Though he left Iraq 5 years before the 2003 US invasion, he fled at a time when the danger was just as real. With 5 sons, Habib feared losing them to conscription in the Iraqi army – fodder for Sadaam’s military machine. The choice then to flee to neighboring Jordan was easy.
But the 9 years since have been anything but. Because he could not risk returning to Iraq and not being allowed back into Jordan, Habib overstayed his 6-month Jordanian visa. He has been living in Jordan illegally ever since, unable to work, unable to send his then teenaged children to school, unable to access quality healthcare. He and hundreds of thousands of others like him are now trapped in a legal limbo in Jordan, disenfranchised and unrecognized, unable either to return to Iraq or immigrate to third countries.
Though the nightly news reminds us all too often about the violence in Iraq, it puts no face on the victims. US servicemen and women killed daily. More Iraqi civilians also killed and maimed. And now more than 2 million refugees, adrift outside of a country many fear may never be home again.
April 18th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
