When Iraqis Come to America

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Although Arizona has only a small population of Iraqi immigrants-- about 2,800, out of more than 90,000 in the U.S.--Faeza was able to turn to them for help. A few days after she arrived in the U.S., she ran into two Iraqi Americans from the local Chaldean Catholic Church, who were in the IRC office to meet Iraqi Christian refugees. When they saw Faeza, who is Muslim, they immediately offered to help. They found her a comfortable apartment in a safer neighborhood and brought her some furniture, food and a cell phone. The church also helped her set up a bank account, collect food stamps and get a driver's license. "She's all alone here," says Amir Sitto, a real estate broker in neighboring Scottsdale. "No husband, no relatives. We had to help her."

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If some of Faeza's hardships are over, others await. The State Department's refugee-resettlement program offers Iraqis rent assistance and food stamps from the Department of Health and Human Services for three months. In Faeza's case, that got her through only until December. She now pays the rent out of her savings, and the monthly allocations of food stamps have stopped. In late January, she starts work as a part-time teaching assistant at Khattab's elementary school, earning $700 a month after deductions. Her monthly rent in the new apartment is $750. Eventually, she hopes she'll be hired to do data entry or computer programming in an office, as she did in Iraq. She's taking classes in English speech and grammar at the University of Phoenix. For many refugees, the language barrier can be the hardest to overcome. Marwan, another Iraqi, who arrived in Phoenix with his wife and infant son just a week after Faeza, remains unemployed. A furniture salesman in Baghdad, his English is even more rudimentary than Faeza's. "It's close to impossible to stand on my own feet," he says in Arabic. Marwan, who asked that his real name be concealed in order to protect relatives still in Iraq, has enrolled in a basic English course, but it may be months before he is proficient enough to get a job.

Though the war is no longer at the forefront of the U.S. political debate, it has upended the lives of a generation of Iraqis, in ways both hopeful and tragic. In Phoenix, Khattab brings home new English phrases he learns every day in second grade at Sahuaro Elementary School. "Khattab is showing great progress and learning the language very quickly," his teacher wrote on his midterm report last month. After his first week of school, he figured out that to fit in, he would need an Arizona Cardinals hat. When I saw him recently, he was asking "What's up?" over and over again. Then he stopped, looked up at me and asked, "Where is my father?"

Recently, Faeza spoke with her sister, who is still in Baghdad. Samira said her teenage son had narrowly escaped being kidnapped from a street in their neighborhood. Faeza immediately grabbed her son and hugged him tightly. "When I see Khattab, this let me to stay here," she says in her broken English. "O.K., this is for Khattab. This is the future for Khattab."