Not Just Numbers, But Lives

Since arriving Amman has received a couple of feet of snow which has been quite a treat to see. The city is beautiful and from what I am told, it is a treat to see it blanketed in white. That said, it has made a few of our appointments hard to keep, though it hasn't slowed us down too much. We are going to change our plans a bit however and head out this morning for Syria where by all accounts the greatest number of Iraqi refugees are living, giving us great opportunities to hear people's stories and make connections with relatives of folks back in the Bay Area. So it is off to Damascus for a couple of days before then heading to Aleppo in northern Syria. 

Yesterday we were able to meet with one of the Vatican's representatives in the region and also meet with the Regional coordinator of refugees for the State Department. Both unique and eye opening perspectives on the current Iraqi refugee situation. 

Monsignor Matteo from the Vatican was a delightful priest who seems to be fairly new to the region. In spite of his recent appointment to this area, he was very aware of the challenges refugees are facing and the burdens being placed in the Jordanian government. As will be the theme throughout our travels, his estimate of the number of refugees was different than the numbers we had heard before which are different than the State Department gave. Monsignor Matteo did give us interesting insight into the plight of Christian Iraqi refugees [and Christians living as a targeted minority in Iraq] who are fleeing land they have lived since the time of Jesus. For whatever reason I was struck and moved at the thought of Christians fleeing from a land that they have lived in for so long.

Later in the evening we met with the Regional Director of refugee resettlement from the State Department who had a very different perspective on the current situation. She suggested that the number of refugees reported to be living in Jordan was in fact smaller than people were saying and that the problem was not as big as people were being led to believe.  As she spoke I began to realize something about the process of refugee resettlement. For better or for worse [and I will refrain from stating which I think it is for now] in a post 9/11 world the process is not designed to get refugees through it and into the US. 

As we listened and talked with the representative from the State Department the scale of the problem came into focus and the question was asked about why the US was not processing and resettling the number of refugees that it said it would resettle in the United States. It was at this point that I did get a bit frustrated because her response was that it is a "rolling process" and that people should not be so focused on September 30th [which is the end of the fiscal year for resettling refugees meaning that if the US says it will receive 12,000 Iraqi refugees (which it has for this year) then it has until September 30 to do so. After that date it is a different year and a different number] nor should people be so focused on such an "arbitrary number."

I explained to her that as a citizen all I have to go by is that number and that my understanding is that any number below the stated number (again, for this year the stated number is 12,000 Iraqi refugees) would not be rolled over into the next year and are therefore lost opportunities for refugees to escape their situation [to be clear, a refugee is someone who is fleeing their country for fear of persecution and for fear of their safety]. To which the representative from the State Department has no response...

...which is a challenge to me because each "number" that we are talking about here is a human life. Two of those lives we met with the other night, still others we have seen and many more we will be meeting/talking with in the days to come. Not just numbers, but lives.