Safe, but not secure: Iraqi refugees struggle to make it in Silicon Valley

Now, as America’s involvement in Iraq winds down, the influx of Iraqi refugees to the United States is ramping up.

Rather than savoring the sweet payoffs of coming to America, they have arrived in a downbeat nation. Jobs matching their skills are virtually impossible to find. The stresses and strains of joblessness, underemployment and alienation are adding to the psychological scars of war.

"The Iraqis are the most punished people in the whole world," said Haitham Jasim, 36, a former interpreter for U.S. troops who arrived in July at Mineta San Jose International Airport holding a "special immigrant visa," just in time for the Fourth of July. The economy has stalled the start of building a new life with his young family.

Jasim is one of two Iraqis MediaNews has followed since the summer. The other is Mona Gholam, a 32-year-old woman with a gentle smile who now lives in Santa Clara. Her 4-year-old daughter was killed when an American bomb fell on a house where her family had sought shelter.

"My smile is not real," Gholam said. "Every night I can’t sleep. And I always think of suicide."

Refugee influx

The war began in March 2003, but in its first four years saw 764 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the in the United States. In the South Bay, there was one.

After refugee organizations accused the U.S. of not meeting its moral responsibility, the Bush administration in 2007 announced it was ready to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees who had aided U.S. troops. By fiscal year 2008, 13,822 were allowed to come; at least 17,000 are expected this year.

Iraqis represent about a third of the refugees now being settled in Silicon Valley — 127 last year, according to Catholic Charities and the San Jose office of the International Rescue Committee.

About 100 others have come into the Bay Area through San Francisco since October 2007. "As is true with any wave of refugees, the best and brightest come first — the people with the most resources who were savvy enough to make their way through the system," said Rachel Lau, executive director of the local International Rescue Committee office. Most Iraqi refugees in the Bay Area are settling in San Jose and Oakland, she said.

"They had drivers and maids and large properties. They had hoped to quickly become self-sufficient, but they’re now looking for jobs in one of the worst economies in our lifetimes. It’s not what they expected."

Neither Lau nor Ellen Dumesnil, division director at Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, could think of one Iraqi refugee here who had landed a professional-level job. If they’re working at all, most have jobs as retail sales clerks or as restaurant servers, bussers and cooks.

An outdated refugee system, Lau and Dumesnil said, doesn’t pay to recertify doctors and other professionals so they can work here. "It’s a waste of human capital," Dumesnil said.

Safety, but few jobs

Jasim, an electrical engineer, was confident that he would quickly find a job in his field in Silicon Valley. But by the time he, his wife, Jamila Ghanm, and two young children had settled into a two-bedroom apartment in West San Jose, the economy had fallen off a cliff. He sought a job for nine months before landing a temporary, $15 an hour position as a case worker and translator at a San Jose nonprofit agency.

He had arrived here to great fanfare, with the loving support of a Sunnyvale couple, Marine Capt. John Jacobs and his wife, Ronni, a former Marine. Jasim told his story to Bay Area television, radio and newspaper reporters, generating an outpouring of good will and more than $13,000 in contributions to his family. One anonymous donor gave him a low-mileage Volkswagen Passat.

His inability to find any job for so long indicates the uphill climb for most Iraqi refugees.

"In Iraq, I could get a job but had no safety for my family," he said. "Here, I had safety but no job."

Bomb changes everything

Though accepting welfare goes against the Iraqi mindset, some refugees, such as Gholam, were so emotionally and even physically scarred that they have little choice but to accept a handout.

Gholam can’t stop thinking and dreaming of the life she once had. "I was completely spoiled as a child," she said. "Then I got married and worked as a math and science teacher. I loved my husband. We had a beautiful house and a beautiful daughter named Iraq. No one had a happier life than me."

Then came the war and one day a bomb that killed her daughter and destroyed her life. She woke up in a hospital in Vienna. She was mostly paralyzed on her left side and deaf in one ear.

"Iraq, my country, was gone, and my daughter, Iraq, was gone, too," Gholam said.

She returned home with her husband, but he soon divorced her and remarried because he considered Gholam damaged. In September 2005, she fled to Jordan, where she sometimes lived on the streets.

It took 21/2 years for American officials to confirm her story and to grant her refugee status.

She arrived in San Jose in early 2008. She now lives on $640 a month in Supplemental Security Income and complains that her Medi-Cal coverage doesn’t provide the treatment she feels the U.S. owes her.

Refugee trauma

Dumesnil of Catholic Charities says Gholam’s case is more tragic than most but notes that almost all Iraqi refugees have been through some kind of trauma.

Sharrock, who helps screen refugees at the clinic, says two-thirds of the Iraqis are suffering from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder — compared with fewer than 10 percent of the general population.

Disappointment might be etched into their faces, say those who work with the Iraqi refugees, but so are their dreams that life will get better.

"There’s a remarkable resilience," Sharrock said, "and a will to survive."