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Iraqi Kurdish refugees stuck in limbo in
Mobile
22.6.2006
By BRENDAN KIRBY
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For seven years,
Nechervan Barwary and his mother have been stuck in
a bureaucratic tangle, waiting for the United States
to permanently welcome them.
Barwary and Shukrya Ahmed Barwary, Kurds who fled
Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 1998, applied for
permanent residency the following year and have been
waiting for the federal government to act on their
applications ever since. Until it does, the son and
mother cannot apply for citizenship, and Nechervan
Barwary cannot bring his wife to America.
"I've been here almost eight years, and I don't have
a green card," said Nechervan Barwary, whose English
is better than he professes. "That's a long time."
The Barwarys last month filed a lawsuit in the
federal court in Mobile seeking to force the Justice
Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security
to expedite their applications.
The government has provided no official explanation
for the delay, said the Barwarys' attorney, Karen
Weinstock, who added that the wait is the longest
that any of her clients has experienced.
"My sense of it is it's held up because of security
checks," she said. "But it's really ridiculous."
What makes the Barwarys' situation so unusual and
maddening, Weinstock said, is that authorities
cleared other members of their family years ago.
Saeed Barwary, the father of Nechervan Barwary and
husband of Shukrya Barwary, already has completed
the five-year process of becoming an American
citizen.
9/11 security measures
Under federal law, all foreigners must live in the
United States for at least a year before they can
seek permanent residency.
The process includes background checks conducted by
the FBI. Most of the time, according to the
Department of Homeland Security, the process runs
smoothly.
"We aim for a six-month wait," said Sharon Rummery,
a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services at the Department of Homeland Security.
"Ninety-nine percent of name checks go very quickly,
within six months. There's only 1 percent of those
who are held up, but it can be considerable."
The agency's Web site states that the Atlanta
office, which covers Alabama, now is processing
applications filed Jan. 4.
Weinstock said she can only speculate that her
clients' names are similar to those in the databases
the FBI searches. Making people wait years before
determining whether they pose a security threat does
a disservice to the applicants and the country, she
said.
"If they were terrorists, and it took six years for
the government to find that out, wouldn't that
concern you?" she said. "It serves no security
purpose. It's crazy."
FBI officials did not respond to inquiries about why
the Barwarys' applications have been held up so long
or when the name checks would be completed. But in
an affidavit submitted in a separate federal court
case from New Hampshire in March, an FBI official
explained that the system has been strained by
increased security measures adopted as a result of
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
William Cannon, chief of the FBI's National Name
Check Program Section, said the bureau processed
about 2.5 million name check requests a year before
those attacks. For fiscal year 2005, that figure was
more than 3.7 million, he stated in the affidavit.
The document states that more than 70 federal state
and local agencies regularly request FBI name
searches.
The process involves electronic searches of more
than 105 million records that contain the names of
people who have been the subject of FBI
investigations as well as associates,
co-conspirators and witnesses.
Most of the time -- Cannon's affidavit says about 68
percent -- the electronic checks reveal within 48
hours that the FBI has "no record" of the name.
For an additional 22 percent, secondary, manual
searches are completed within 30 to 60 days. In most
cases, these come back as having "no record," as
well.
The remaining 10 percent are identified as being the
subject of a possible FBI record. In those cases,
FBI personnel must physically retrieve and review
the file. If it is not available electronically, FBI
agents must retrieve the relevant information from
an existing paper record.
Weinstock said she does not believe the FBI has
enough personnel to compete those physical records
checks in a timely fashion.
"There are just so many cases. They just don't get
to it on time," she said.
Fleeing tyranny
Nechervan Barwary said his father and brother fled
Iraq in 1997. Saeed Barwary worked for an
organization opposed to Saddam, drawing the former
dictator's attention, he said.
"Saddam, they tried to kill them," he said.
The two went to Guam and then onto the United
States. The U.S. government granted them asylum and
placed them in Mobile, Nechervan Barwary said. He
said he, his mother and his sister joined them a
year later.
Saeed Barwary works as an engineer for Mobile
Aerospace Engineering. Nechervan Barwary, 17 when he
arrived in the United States, now works for the same
company as a welder and his sister attends college.
Nechervan Barwary said the family received
permission from the U.S. government in 2004 to visit
a sick uncle. By the time they arrived in their
native Dahuk, he said, his uncle already had died.
But the family stayed three months, and he said he
married his wife.
"That was the first time and the last time (I've
seen her since the marriage)" he said.
Nechervan Barwary said he longs for his wife to join
him in America, a country he one day hopes to live
in as a full-fledged citizen.
"It's going to be hard for somebody to do this. When
I tell people, they are surprised," he said. "I do
what I got to do."
Still, Barwary said, he and this mother have no
second thoughts. "But we like the United States. We
haven't thought about moving back to Iraq," he said.
The lawsuit, which names Cannon, Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff, Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other top
officials, asks a judge to "compel Defendants and
those acting under them to perform their duty owed
to Plaintiffs."
Weinstock said the law offers no other remedy.
"They pretty much have an unlimited amount of time,
which is the problem, unless the court compels them
to complete the review," she said.
Meanwhile, Shukrya and Nechervan Barwary have no
choice but to wait.
Al com
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