On Sunday, Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh participated in a ceremony in Amman, Jordan, to mark the United States hitting its target of taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees in a year-old resettlement program.
On Sunday, Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh participated in a ceremony in Amman, Jordan, to mark the United States hitting its target of taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees in a year-old resettlement program. On Wednesday, the 47-year-old former construction worker and his family were walking grocery aisles, stocking up on roasted chicken, milk and lemons for their new home outside San Diego.
It didn’t take long for Mr Jouriyeh, his 42-year-old wife and four children, ages 8 to 14, to feel welcome.
“America is a beautiful country,” he said through an Arabic translator at the office of the International Rescue Committee in El Cajon, a San Diego suburb that has been a magnet for Iraqis and, more recently, Syrians who are fleeing war. “The way they treat people and the people of America are very nice ... When you go down the streets, everyone smiles at you. Even if they don’t know you, they just smile at you.”
San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, has received 626 Syrian refugees since October 1, more than any other in the United States. Many smaller cities have accepted outsized number of Syrians, including Erie, Pennsylvania (205), Toledo, Ohio (109), and Boise, Idaho (108).
California and Michigan are neck-and-neck among states for receiving the most Syrian refugees, followed by Arizona, Texas and Illinois. Cities with large numbers include Chicago (469), Glendale, Arizona (384), Troy, Michigan (325) and Dallas (293).
Refugees are assigned to cities where they have family and friends or, failing that, where there is an established community of immigrants who share their culture, said Mr David Murphy, executive director in San Diego for the International Rescue Committee, one of the nine organisations that helps refugee settle in the US.
In El Cajon, population 100,000, some store signs on Three decades ago, an Iraqi Chaldean immigrant settled in El Cajon and the impact “snowballed” into a large Arabic-speaking community, Mr Murphy said. Iraqis have been coming for years but Syrians are relatively new.
The US said its target of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the 2016 fiscal year was reached Monday. The US resettlement program focuses on the most vulnerable refugees, including those who were subjected to violence or torture or are sick.
