Anecdotal.
John points us to this anecdotal LiveJournal post:
Remember Ali, the Iraqi student I wrote about a few weeks before leaving for Italy when telling about going to the antiwar rally?
He’s gone. Disappeared.
His parents’ phone number is disconnected.
His mother cannot be reached at work.
His father disappeared first… and now, one of our babies is gone!
His counselor said to me this afternoon: “Either the parents have been called in by the government for questioning, or else they’ve all fled.”
Further anecdotes, to give you an idea of what it’s like to flee:
Like millions of immigrants, the Ahmeds had lived and worked in the United States illegally—but undisturbed—for years. That changed this year, when Pakistan became the latest country whose citizens are required to register with immigration officials in the United States, or face detention or deportation.
Immigrants who entered the country illegally, or whose visas expired, can be deported or detained when they register.
The registration, which includes people from 24 Middle Eastern countries plus North Korea, is causing an upheaval in Muslim immigrant communities across the nation as many decide to seek refuge in Canada.
It has turned border cities in New York, Michigan and Vermont into unlikely refugee camps for hundreds waiting to get into Canada before the March 21 registration deadline for Pakistanis. Aid workers estimate that 2,500 Pakistanis have left the United States for Canada, and another 1,000 are waiting to leave.
The numbers of people fleeing will grow, they predict, as more countries are added to the list and as Canada prepares to shut its doors this year to foreign refugees coming from the United States.
Anecdotes about what it’s like to stay:
“Everybody is stressed out. The FBI has assured us that they will do everything necessary to ensure our safety… but not everything raises to the level of a crime that you can report,” notes Basha, chairman of the American Muslim Council.
The ugliness has been sporadic so far: four women wearing the Muslim head-dress or hijab were verbally abused in a Venice, California restaurant in the past week, according to CAIR, an Islamic advocacy group that monitors hate crimes against the Muslim community.
In the Midwestern United States, a Muslim man and his son were refused service in a Michigan store, while in neighbouring Illinois, one mosque received a bomb threat, and worshippers at another were spooked when projectiles shattered a window during evening prayers.
Some anecdotes as to why they might be staying here in the first place:
“Which one of you would like to see Saddam removed?” An Iraqi immigrant asks this question in Arabic of fellow immigrants. All raised their hands.
“Saddam’s people shoot him and he lost his finger,” said the translator, pointing at the hand of one immigrant.
Man after man after man at a Shiite Muslim community center showed the scars of the Iraqi regime – physical and emotional.
“How many of you lost somebody because of Saddam?” the translator continued asking.
“Two brothers,” said one.
“Five brothers,” said another.
It’s obvious why so many here want Saddam toppled. But it’s how he’s being toppled that is causing some concern.
“Nobody would be happy to see his country being demolished and bombed. It’s a mixed feeling of doubt, fear and hope,” said Iman Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Center.
The federal government is declining to specify, however. So anecdotes on that score are rather, as they say, thin on the ground.
Commenting is closed for this article.
