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CURRENT
ISSUE: September 4, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 15Oakland,
CA
Iraqi Christians struggle to obtain visas
from U.S. State Department
ARLINGTON,
Va. (CNS) -- Joseph Kassab, head of the Chaldean Federation of America,
met Aug. 25 for the sixth time this year with officials from the State
Department to press the case to allow Chaldeans -- Iraqi Christians --
fleeing their homeland to emigrate to the United States.
“We’ve got their attention,” Kassab told Catholic News
Service during an interview prior to meeting No. 6.
After the meeting, he told CNS by telephone, “There’s going
to be a little help. ... There’s a little light at the end of the
tunnel.”
Kassab, whose brother is Chaldean Archbishop Djibrail Kassab of Basra,
Iraq, is still waiting for effective action.
He estimated that less than half of the 1.1 million-1.2 million Chaldeans
who were in Iraq before the U.S. war began in 2003 remain in Iraq today.
Kassab said most of them -- 92 percent -- have fled to Greece, Syria,
Turkey and Jordan.
Kassab distributed a 44-page report, “Operation R4 -- Wave 1: A
Survey Study of Iraqi-Christian Refugees Worldwide,” during his
State Department meeting. The previous day he gave the report to representatives
of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The “R4” in the
report’s title, Kassab said, stands for research, rescue, relief
and resettlement.
Kassab said the U.N. response was, “If you have the data and you
want to organize it, we’ll certainly look into it.”
Kassab’s report documents more than 1,200 cases of Chaldean Christians
leaving Iraq, and those interviewed were allowed to give multiple reasons
for their departure.
In interviews with 368 Chaldean refugees now in Greece, Syria, Turkey
and Jordan, the organization found that 85 percent of the cases involved
people leaving because of religious persecution. About 6 percent of the
cases involved Chaldean women having been sexually assaulted or raped,
and 15 percent of the cases included the vulnerability of women and girls
in their family as a reason for leaving Iraq.
About 23 percent of the cases involved abduction of a relative by members
of the Iraqi insurgency, militia or Islamic gangs.
Chaldeans have been targeted for violence because “the Iraqi Christians
are a peaceful people,” Kassab said. “They are not divided
into tribes. They don’t have a militia to protect them like the
Shiites or the Sunnis or the Kurds.”
Kassab said there are about 250,000 Chaldean-Americans, concentrated largely
in the Detroit and Chicago metropolitan areas and in California and Nevada..
He added that most Chaldeans leaving Iraq would ordinarily qualify for
emigration to the United States, as they can identify a close relative
willing to take them in who is a U.S. citizen.
However, a federal regulation that was passed as part of the Patriot Act
forbids the entry of immigrants determined to have provided material support
to the enemy. Paying ransom to kidnappers has been interpreted as providing
material aid, Kassab said. Even the Iraqi citizen who helped locate U.S.
Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch and aided in her rescue has been denied entry
because he had to pose as being sympathetic to the Iraqis, Kassab said.
Kassab told the story of a Chaldean woman he identified only as Miriam,
whose house was occupied for a week by insurgents. They forced Miriam
and her daughters, ages 16 and 15, to cook for them and give them directions.
On the last day of their stay, the six insurgents raped Miriam and her
daughters and told them they would be killed if they ever said anything.
After the ordeal, Miriam and her daughters fled to another country --
the name of which Miriam did not want disclosed for fear of the insurgents’
revenge.
The family was denied U.S. entry because the cooking and directions under
duress were construed by U.S. officials as providing material support.
An armed security guard stands watch as Iraqi Catholics
arrive for Easter Mass in Baghdad, April 16. Many Iraqi Christians are
trying to leave the country, which is rocked with increased sectarian
violence.
CNS PHOTO/ALI JASIM/REUTERS
