Syrian refugees find new home, peace in metro Detroit
Gazing through his living room window in a quiet block in Garden City, a 48-year-old Syrian refugee ponders his new life in America.
“In Syria, there’s no safety; it’s too dangerous,” Moustafa Assad said from a sparsely furnished home he rents, with his two sons sitting next to him on his couch. “At least here, it’s safe for them. There’s no war. … I want to stay here for my kids’ future so they can go to school and learn.”
Assad’s hopes are echoed by up to 100 Syrian refugees who have arrived in Michigan this year, one of almost 1,500 who came to the U.S. in 2015, fleeing Syria’s four-year civil war and refugee camps. It’s a small number compared with the hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others who are fleeing war, conflicts and poverty in other parts of Asia and in Africa and arriving in Europe, but the number could grow in coming months as the U.S. Department of State seeks to increase the number of refugees the U.S. takes in.
More than 4 million Syrians have left their country in what is now the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. On Monday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. will increase the number of refugees “we admit to the U.S. to 100,000 per year for the next two years,” an increase from the 75,000 the U.S. took in this fiscal year. Many of those refugees are expected to be Syrians who could end up in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S.
In Michigan, state officials, elected representatives and Arab-American social service agencies are keen to welcome refugees, saying they could help the region and repopulate areas like Detroit. An opinion piece in the New York Times in May, cowritten by a Stanford University professor who called for bringing Syrian refugees to Detroit, has sparked discussion about how refugees could help the city.
“This will add to the population of Detroit,” said Haifa Fakhouri, president of the Arab American and Chaldean Council. “And it will bring economic benefits.”
The number of refugees who would settle in metro Detroit is unclear; federal officials decide where to place them. It’s a sensitive topic, given that some in Michigan may be opposed to bringing in newcomers while many metro Detroiters are struggling economically and may fear that refugees would drain resources and take jobs. Some Republicans also worry about potential security risks, such as members of the Islamic State trying to gain entry. And a new survey released Monday by the Pew Research Center showed that Americans view immigrants from the Middle East the most negatively when compared with immigrants from other parts of the world.
But Fakhouri, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Gov. Rick Snyder say the state should be welcoming. On Tuesday, Snyder said that refugees can be an asset to Michigan’s economy, saying that some of them “were professionals; they were people who hire people and tend to create jobs.”
His spokesman Dave Murray added: “The images that we’ve seen of refugee children and their families are certainly heartbreaking.”
“Gov. Snyder has said that Michigan is a welcoming state,” Murray said, “and we are open to working with the federal government to see if there is a potential role for Michigan to play in relocating some of the refugees.”
Peters of Bloomfield Township, one of two senators to meet with Syrian refugees this month at a camp in Jordan, said, “We need to do more about allowing folks to come into the United States.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said through a spokesman that “everyone is welcome in Detroit, including refugees from Syria.”
So far, only about 1,800 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the U.S. since the start of the Syrian conflict in spring 2011, according to State Department figures. Countries neighboring Syria, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, have taken in millions of refugees, and Germany plans to take in 800,000.
Source: www.freep.com