Syrian Refugees Resettled in the U.S.: Why Them and Not Others?
By Nayla Rush, March 1, 2017
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently shared on its website the story of a Syrian refugee family who was resettled from Jordan to Dallas. The 30-year-old mechanic, Firas al Ahmad, his wife Samira and their three children fled to Jordan at the end of 2013 when the fighting intensified near their home. The family struggled there for over three years due to the "lack of legal work opportunities" and welcomed UNHCR's offer to resettle in the United States. Once their application approved, they sold their furniture and moved out from their apartment to stay with Firas' dad in the Jordanian city of Irbid.
The family is filmed there the day before departure. Firas explained on camera: "I'm leaving because of my kids, for their future. I hope they can get a good education, and have a better life than the one we had ... The hardest thing is leaving family members behind. All of them but especially my father." (Firas's brothers, aunt, and father left Syria with them.)
Samira too was emotional: "Syria is everything. They say, a nation is like a mother. What's our worth without our mother?" She then burst in tears. Firas reiterated: "Syria is everything, it is everything to me. The minute the war is over I will go back. Even now I wish it would end today, before we leave, so that we could go home."
http://cis.org/rush/syrian-refugees-resettled-us-why-them-and-not-others
