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Nashville: Iraqis, Kurds immigrants miss
center's aid
10.1.2007 |
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Closing means less help
assimilating in Nashville area for Iraqis, Kurds
January 10, 2007
Before the Iraqi House closed its doors for good,
Phura Hamid went there for help in filling out a
complicated maze of citizenship applications.
Hamid will soon take her oath to become an American
and says she has the agency to thank. But a loss of
funding left its directors with little choice than
to close the place that helped Iraqis, Kurds and
Arabic-speaking clients to settle and assimilate in
the Nashville area.
"They have been a huge asset for the Iraqi community
here," said Hamid, who came to the United States
from her hometown of Basrah, Iraq, in 2000. "Now,
those who don't have too much English skill don't
know what to do, where to go for help." |
Nabaz Khoshnaw, former Iraqi House director |
Hamid's parents, Falah and Kanat Jbara, and brother
fall into that category. The agency helped her
brother get a job when he came last year with their
parents. The couple got help from the Iraqi House
with setting up doctor's appointments, applying for
Section 8 housing and translation.
Now Hamid, a contractor for the Army who spoke
English before she came, has to fill in the gaps
left by the absence of the Nolensville Pike charity.
"I can't help them much because I have a lot of
responsibilities," she said. "It's like having two
houses to take care of."
Doors closed in October
Former Iraqi House director Nabaz Khoshnaw said the
Iraqi House provided help to its clients 1,100 times
between October 2005 and September 2006. It closed
at the end of October when it was rejected for
several key grants, he said.
"It was very important for all the Iraqis and
Kurdish people and other Arab speakers," Khoshnaw
said of the Iraqi House.
Nashville is home to about 8,000 Kurds, this
country's largest population of natives of the
Kurdistan region, according to the Tennessee
Department of Human Services. Many of Khoshnaw's
former clients don't have phones, and the older
residents often lack English-speaking skills, so the
agency helped with directions to immigration
offices, finding a good doctor and meeting employers
who didn't require fluent English.
"We're worried they will become more isolated from
the community," Khoshnaw said.
Immigrants are fewer
But local social service agencies say the heavy
stream of immigrants has slowed. While a handful of
Iraqis still come in each year to join family
members, the main influx has passed.
World Relief resettlement director Nathan Kinser
said the agency offers six months of aid to new
refugees in Nashville, and it has served Iraqis in
very small numbers in the past few years. Catholic
Charities of Tennessee has a more long-term program,
but it still doesn't have many clients of Iraqi or
Kurdish descent.
Just a few former clients of the Iraqi House came in
looking for help with their green cards, but
Catholic Charities couldn't help them, Charities'
refugee services coordinator Asrar Badikir said.
She's had to refer most Iraqis to state agencies for
help.
"The majority of them have been here more than five
years," Badikir said. "We are only funded to help
for five years, and they just don't fall into any of
our services."
The largest group of Iraqis left for the U.S. in the
1990s, after the Gulf War, said Peter Eisenhauer, a
U.S. State Department spokesman. In recent years,
most of the refugees moving to the U.S. came from
African nations.
The same is true for Nashville, where agencies have
resettled a much larger number of Somalis in recent
years.
"Our biggest population here are still the Somalis,"
Kinser of World Relief said.
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