Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
ishtartv.com
- newsdeeply.com
By Danish
Mehboob, Aug. 2, 2017
Michigan,
with its long Arab-American history, offers refugees fleeing war in Iraq a
family away from home. Yet the financial crisis made it even harder to find
work there, while the arrival of secondary migrants drawn to Michigan’s sense
of community strains resources.
When
Iraqi refugee Mohamad Soleiman visited Dearborn, Michigan, it felt like home –
a feeling that is missing where he lives in Albany, New York.
“My
family is in Michigan,” he says, referring to the Iraqi population in the
state. “Of course I will want to move.”
“It’s
likely that someone coming from Iraq will know someone in Michigan,” says Joseph Kassab, an
Iraqi-American and member of the Chaldean Federation of America, a
Michigan-based education and community nonprofit. Iraqis there are sustained by
the sense of community, he says.
In
the last decade, more than 35,000 refugees have been resettled in Michigan, and
over 60 percent of them were Iraqis.
In Dearborn, roughly one-third of the city’s 95,000-odd residents are Arab-American or
of Arab descent.
“It’s
likely that someone coming from Iraq will know someone in Michigan.”
Michigan
has a history of Arab immigration and refugee resettlement that dates back more
than a century. The first wave of Arab migrants was made up of mostly Lebanese
and Syrian Christians coming in the late 19th century to escape religious
persecution under the Ottoman Empire.
At
the start of the 20th century, Michigan’s booming auto industry, especially the
Ford Motor Company, drew large immigrant numbers from the rest of the world,
too. Many Arabs arrived at this time as economic migrants looking for work. And
by the time the auto industry suffered heavy setbacks in the early 1970s and
1980s, the area around Detroit had already established its
Arab-American identity.
Michigan
continued to draw Arabs from across the U.S. and the world, especially in the
wake of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975. The influx of the Lebanese put
southeast Michigan, which includes Detroit and Dearborn, on the map as the
place with the largest
concentration of Arabs in the U.S.
A
large number of grocery stores opened to serve the immigrant community,
according to Matthew
Jaber Stiffler, a researcher on Arab-American history: They were first
owned by the Lebanese, and then, when they moved to the suburbs, Iraqis
took over.
Iraqis
now run many grocery stores and gas stations in southeast Michigan. “If it’s
not owned by an Iraqi person, then it’s probably owned by a Lebanese person,”
Stiffler says. These “legacy stores” are opening jobs to newly arrived refugees
in Michigan.
The
total number of Iraqi immigrants, including refugees, per county in Michigan.
Visualization: Danish Mehboob. Data: US Census Bureau.
Yet
despite such help from the community, Department of Labor statistics show that
employment took a dive in the last decade. In the wake of the 2008 recession,
Michigan had one of the largest Arab refugee populations and one of the highest
unemployment rates in the country.
Nearly
half of Iraqi refugees coming to the U.S. live in either Michigan or
California, states that had some
of the highest unemployment rates in the country in 2008. While
California and Michigan are recovering, refugees face particular challenges in
this economic climate: A 2012 study shows
that refugees generally face higher rates of unemployment than other
demographics in the U.S.
Resettlement
agencies in Michigan say their resources are not only stretched by refugees
being directly resettled in Michigan, but also by people moving to Michigan
from other states to join family and friends, so-called
“secondary migrants.”
Ahmad
Jaber, director of the Arab American
Association of New York, says there has been a trend of Iraqi refugees
settling first in other states, then moving to Michigan within a couple months
of being in the U.S. This puts a strain on resources because most federal funds
allocated to the resettlement program in a state are meant to cover refugees
initially resettled there, and not secondary migrants.
There
is no federal system for keeping track of where refugees relocate to,
so most resources do not follow refugees across state borders. Some states do
receive funds based on secondary migration, but they are allocated
based on the historic resettlement patterns, which may not reflect future
trends. Many refugees who move states need to find new social service providers
or start anew without any government support.
Joseph
Kassab says refugees moving to Michigan from other states tend to lose out on
money and government benefits such as housing, healthcare and employment
services. “It’s hurt them more than it’s benefited them, to be honest,”
says Kassab.
Nonprofit
organizations like the Arab Community Center and the Chaldean Federation are
trying to help the still-growing Iraqi population. They reach out to members of
the local community via job fairs and provide transport, which tends to be an
issue in metro Detroit.
According
to Madiha Tariq, deputy director at the Arab Community Center for Economic and
Social Services in Detroit, it’s still difficult for newly arrived
refugees to find employment, but their prospects are on the rise. The community
center connected more than 2,000 people with jobs throughout metro
Detroit in 2013, and Tariq says those numbers have kept steady since. Based on
data from the Economic
Policy Institute’s State of Working America Data Library, unemployment in
Michigan is finally returning to levels before the 2007–08
economic crisis.
The
enduring uncertainty is incentive enough for Mohamad Soleiman not to move to
Dearborn. He says he has wanted to move to Michigan for a long time – while his
current home, Albany, has a history of resettlement and a significant Arab
population, its Iraqi community is small compared to Michigan’s.
Yet
moving would be financially risky – it took him years to rebuild his career
after he and his family fled extremists’ threats in Iraq in 2008, leaving their
hair salon business behind. “It took [so] long to get my business,” he says of
the new salon he established with his wife in Albany. “It will be difficult to
move from here and continue.”
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