Internet Research: Refining the Plight of Middle Eastern Refugees

Internet Research

Overview

This week I treaded into the turbulent waters of the “internet database” and began to sift through the much and mire in order to compose a coherent study on Middle Eastern immigration to the Bay Area. Remember the three main topics: the Iranian Revolution 1979, the Arab-Israeli conflict (Palestine) and the War on Terror. For the sake of simplicity I will divide these into sub-categories to provide easier access to the progress of the study as the weeks progress.

The Iranian Revolution and its fallout

“On 1 February 1979…the undisputed leader of one of the major revolutionary movements in modern history,” arrived back in Tehran, victorious (Moin, 199). Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, one of the most polarizing figures of the 20^th century, successfully deposed the Shahinshah (King of Kings) of Iran and defeated the United States C.I.A. in a political battle for the fate of Iran. Khomeini carried with him dreams of creating an Islamic Republic that would adhere to Shia Islamic values. Due to his fundamental religious ideology many Iranian Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, Parsis and other religious groups were forced to flee the country or face persecution. Khomeini espoused the belief that “Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights,” and therefore anyone who was in contradictory belief to the new supreme ruler of Iran would have been wise to leave the country (Moin, 208). This included a large segment of the former governmental authority that was loyal to the Shah. Everyone who worked with the Americans was in danger of Khomeini retribution. After the revolution Khomeini proclaimed, “Though freedom has been achieved, the roots of imperialism and Zionism have not yet been severed. To achieve real independence we have to remove all forms of American influence, whether economic, political, military or cultural,” (Moin, 213). These very direct threats led to a massive migration of Iranian populations away from the Islamic Republic and towards Afghanistan, Iraq and the United States. While the vast majority of Iranian refugees fled to Afghanistan and Iraq significant portions fled to European countries or the United States for fear of marginalization by the Islamic community within neighboring countries. According to the Development Research Center (DRC) as of 1983 291,040 Iranians had immigrated to the United States and were living in the country under the status of “Global Migrant.”

As a result of Khomeini’s harsh policies the United States adopted a special status for Iranian refugees that provided them protection in the form of overseas resettlement programs. A community consisting of “Baha’is, Armenian and Assyrian Christians, converts to Christianity, Jews, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians,” that were forced to flee Iran were granted “Priority Two or P-2” status by the United States government and were subsequently subsidized for relocation (Shanfield, 5). From 1980 to 2002 the United States has relocated roughly 58,000 Iranians strictly on the basis of religious affiliation (Shanfield, 5). The following graphic taken from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) shows the comparisons of how many Iranian asylum cases were granted from 1980-2004 against asylum cases from other countries as well as providing the isolated data from 2004 that shows decreased levels of asylum cases granted approval.

The decreasing amount of asylum cases granted approval for Iranians suggests that the immediate humanitarian fallout from the 1979 revolution is receding and the increasing tensions between the United States and the Iranian Republic are increasingly dividing the two countries. While this does not specifically point to any Bay Area-centric events, it does show how large segments of the Iranian population were forced out immediately following the Islamic Revolution and how a remainder of the population needed assistance from the international community to protect their various religious and cultural communities from the incursion of the Islamic Republic. There is a plethora of information following the same avenue of American asylum cases and the formulation of the “Specter Amendment” that included Iranians in the Cold War legislation that was used to protect USSR religious refugees. This will be further expanded in the coming weeks, as scholarly books will be used to contextualize the historical relevance of immigration legislation regarding Iranian refugees.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict and its Fallout

Following WWII and the British Mandate of Palestine, the state of Israel was formed out of the former husk of the Ottoman Empire. Using the political power created by the Allies recent victory, the United States and Britain established a Jewish state in the center of the Arab Middle East at the expense of the Palestinian people. While the reasons for the creation of Israel are as varied as the political battle lines drawn in the country contemporarily, the results are even more complicated. The forging of various levels of Zionist political extremity and the subsequent Islamic counterbalances created a humanitarian and political disaster in Israel that’s effects would ripple as far away as the United States. According to the aforementioned Global Migrant Study done in 1983, more than 122, 000 immigrants came to the United States from Israel that year. This is significant because, while no direct international conflict was underway in 1983 in Israel more than 100,000 immigrants decided that the country was unfit to live in. Israeli governmental practices of housing destruction, residency restriction, deportation, unlawful retention, settlement building in Palestinian neighborhoods have contributed to the international perception that the Palestinian people are subjugated within their own lands. B’TSelem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, published a graph that shows the number of Palestinians who have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 in East Jerusalem, 8,558. The frequency of residency revocations within East Jerusalem reached its peak in 2006, showing that despite increasing international humanitarian efforts that the Israeli government is set on eliminating the Palestinian influence, at least within East Jerusalem. Here is a video of Muhammad Khamis, who was removed from his home near Hebron in the 1950’s and now is forced to live in subhuman conditions. http://www.btselem.org/English/Video/20091223_Maale_Adummim_Muhammad_Khamis.asp

While the 2009 statistics for Asylum Seekers and Refugees for Israeli occupied territories were not available the previous years statistics were and are contained in the following table.

Nearly two million refugees suggest that the problems within the Israeli occupied territories have not been solved by nearly seventy years of subjugation, suggesting that the necessity for changing policy is becoming clearer. As of today I have been unable to locate any information regarding the allocation of these refugees but that will be coming in subsequent posts. However, the current political situation in Israel, and for that matter the United States, is so delicate that information regarding Israeli governmental strictures is hard to find from any source that is not strictly pro-Palestinian. Therefore it will take much time and effort to discern relevant statistics from propaganda and for that reason I did not want to rush into providing statistics or policy information until I am positive that the sources are credible.