BAGHDAD ? The United States has nearly halted the processing of visas for Iraqi refugees in Syria, leaving thousands of people who fled a war in their homeland marooned in a country in the grip of an increasingly violent insurrection, with little hope of leaving anytime soon.
The American government has indefinitely postponed sending officials from the Department of Homeland Security to Damascus, the Syrian capital, to conduct required interviews with refugees, judging the security situation there too volatile even though the Syrian government has made entry visas available. Others, including Canada, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have continued to administer cases in Syria.
The United States has also declined to take up makeshift measures suggested by refugee advocates, including conducting the interviews by videoconference. An estimated 10,000 Iraqis in Syria are awaiting interviews.
?They are caught between a rock and no place,? said Becca Heller of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project in New York, who added, ?A simple solution to that would be to agree to conduct interviews by videoconference.?
The United States declined to comment on the situation, but it has argued that the law requires the interviews to be conducted in person, a judgment that means refugees in Syria, where most Iraqis are clustered in the suburbs of Damascus, can only wait as the unrest escalates and countries in the region like Israel worry about a new refugee crisis if Syria?s government collapses or if a civil war erupts, two events that experts believe are increasingly likely.
The unrest in Syria, home to more Iraqi refugees than any other country, has added another layer of delay to the visa process, which had already slowed substantially because of new security checks put in place last year after two Iraqis were arrested in Kentucky on charges of aiding the insurgency in Iraq. Homeland Security officials visited Syria between January and March last year but have not been back because of the security situation.
?I think we should really be worried about another refugee crisis,? said Yasir Imad, an Iraqi who was recently allowed entry to the United States after living in Syria for almost four years. Interviewed recently by this reporter at a coffee shop in Brooklyn, Mr. Imad said that Iraqis in Syria ? many of whom have not put down roots and have kept their bags packed for years ? were increasingly anxious. Some have joined pro-government rallies to avoid deportation, he said. Few want to go back to Iraq.
?The general feeling in Syria is that it is still better to be in Syria than Iraq,? Mr. Imad said.
Many Iraqis who escaped to Syria at the height of the sectarian violence here have chosen to stay there even as the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad?s government turns more violent. But the stakes are higher now in the wake of the American troop departure from Iraq, as a political crisis in Iraq borne of unresolved sectarian conflicts has pushed the country closer to civil war.
Both the stringent new security checks and the popular revolt in Syria have substantially reduced the number of Iraqi refugees entering the United States.
In 2011, fewer Iraqis were admitted than at any time since 2007. In the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 31, 9,388 Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States, compared with more than 18,000 the previous year. Nearly 3,000 Iraqi refugees entered the United States from Syria last year, the most of any country, including Iraq. And nearly 20,000 Iraqis in Syria are in various stages of applying for visas to enter the United States.
In response to the backlog of cases in Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which conducts the initial processing of refugees and had designated many of the Iraqis as eligible for visas, has stopped referring new cases to the United States. Some Iraqis have moved on to find new lives in countries like Jordan and Lebanon. ?This has created a huge amount of uncertainty in the refugee community,? said Paul Stromberg, deputy representative of the agency in Syria. ?We do have Iraqis asking us, ?Please transfer my file to another country.?�?
Many have also chosen to stay in Syria because returning to Iraq would probably mean giving up a chance for a United States visa. Immigration officials say that Iraqis who leave third countries and return home could be penalized because their return would undercut their claims of being at risk of persecution.
Many Iraqis cannot return because their lives would be in danger, and some have lived in limbo for years in Syria as they navigated the byzantine visa process to immigrate to the United States. They include refugees who are particularly vulnerable because of medical conditions or who face threats to their lives because they worked for the American military during the war.
They now are facing many more months, or even years, of waiting. In Syria, they are barred from working legally, although many earn money at odd jobs or by opening shops not registered with the government.
For some, problems from Iraq have followed them, including the settling of vendettas through murder or kidnapping for ransom, according to Mr. Stromberg. Others have passed their medical exams and security clearances as required to immigrate to America, only to have the one-year validity of those procedures lapse because of canceled flights and other last-minute delays, forcing them essentially to begin the process anew.
?We?ve seen some really tragic cases,? Mr. Stromberg said.
Ms. Heller, of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, said she knew of a case in which two orphans, ages 9 and 5, were rejected because of the new security clearances.
During the war, more Iraqis fled to Syria than to any other country. The United Nations agency has registered nearly 140,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria, although some estimate that there tens of thousands more who are not listed on official refugee rosters.
The situation is unlikely to ease anytime soon. Previously, 85 to 90 percent of Iraqi refugees who reached the final stages of security checks were eventually approved. Now, the rejection rate could reach 30 percent or more, Ms. Heller said.
?No one really knows, because most of the cases are on hold,? she said. ?There are a huge slew of rejections that are going to come down the pipeline.?
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d50f433f9d4bb0d8348bead9f651b77e
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