Refugee cap delays Arizona reunion

Policy shift forced son to remain in Mideast

At the beginning of Syria’s civil war, Dawlat Alrifai sold all her belongings and fled to Jordan.

With no end to the conflict in sight, Alrifai, her husband and five of her children applied to be resettled in the United States. But when approval came, her oldest son was not permitted to join them because he had married while they were living in Jordan.

Alrifai hoped her adult son would soon follow, but a number of policy changes under the Trump administration have reduced the number of refugees admitted to the United States since her arrival in July 2016. The Trump administration’s decision to cap the number of refugees admitted to the United States at 30,000 a year could prevent families like Alrifai’s from ever reuniting.

In the last year, the United States has resettled the lowest number of refugees since the program’s founding in 1979.

As of mid-September, two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, the U.S. had resettled 20,918 refugees. Just 60 of them were Syrian, and only about 50 of those were processed from Jordan, where Alrifai’s son still lives.

“In 2015 and 2016, UNCHR Jordan was the largest resettlement operation worldwide,” Francesco Bert, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Jordan, said via email.

Jordan processed more than 56,000 individuals during 2015 and 2016, approximately one in six of the refugees resettled by the UN during that time. But numbers plummetedas countries tightened their quotas. The agency resettled approximately 9,000 refugees fromJordan in 2017.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said the decision to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. is not the “sole barometer” of the country’s aid to vulnerable people worldwide. The lower number of refugees admitted should be considered alongside the 280,000 asylum seekers the U.S. will process next year, as well as humanitarian aid overseas, Pompeo said.

But the decision to lower the refugee cap to 30,000, increases the time families will wait to be reunited. And individuals who previously would have been admitted to the U.S. are now above the cap.

The announcement that there will be a sharp drop in the number of refugees admitted to the United States fell hard on Alrifai’s ears. Her oldest son, Almoatessem, was the first in the family to flee Syria for Jordan, and now is the only family member who remains behind.

In 2012, Almoatessem turned 18 and was required to enter military service. He fled mandatory conscription early in the Syrian civil war, leaving his home in southern Syria to cross into Jordan.

“They catch anyone at this age to go with the government, and anyone who gets with the government, they die,” Alrifai said.

Alrifai, her husband and five other children also left, selling the family’s belongings in Syria, where her husband farmed and she ran a store selling clothing, makeup, perfume and books. They joined Almoattessem near Jordan’s northern city of Irbid.

Life in Jordan was an adjustment; until late 2016 the country required refugees to pay for expensive, restrictive work permits that prohibit many professionals — such as doctors, teachers and drivers — from working in their fields.

The Alrifai family went from owning two homes to renting an apartment. Yet they were safe from pervasive airstrikes in Syria.

“We have family members that were killed in the war, and they left them in Syria,” said Alaa Alrifai, Dawlat’s 18-year-old daughter said. “So our situation is better than any other.”

The family applied for resettlement, but a year into the process they learned Almoatessem, because he had married in Jordan, would not be able to be part of the family’s case. Their oldest daughter, who is now 22, also had a separate resettlement case after getting married.

So when the Alrifai family left Jordan for Arizona, they left behind two of their children, hoping they would soon follow.

“It is very common for a portion of the family to go through the (resettlement) process,” Aaron Rippenkroeger, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Phoenix, said. “Historically ... often over 70 percent of the people coming were joining family members here.”

Three months ago, their oldest daughter, her husband and two children were resettled in Canada.

Almoatessem, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter are still in Jordan and have not heard from the UN for two years.

“It’s like you left your heart there,” Alrifai said. “It was the hardest thing for me.”

Family reunification has been at the core of U.S immigration policy since the sixties. Seventy percent of refugees admitted to the U.S. each year have family already living in the country.

According to a U.S. Department of State representative, family reunification is still part of the State Department’s policy on refugee resettlement.

A representative said that at least 68 percent of cases this fiscal year united family or friends already in the U.S.

But Rippenkroeger described the cap as another form of family separation — similar to the family separations at the Southwest border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy — and another hit to legal immigration.

“The reaction we saw to the family separation (crisis) on the border recently that was very painful to many Americans is happening in this program too,” Rippenkroeger said. “Just in a more protracted, bureaucratic way.”

Alrifai says she stays in touch with Almoatessem via WhatsApp.

As the family has green cards, they could visit her daughter in Canada but don’t have the money. Despite long odds, she hopes her family can be together.

“That’s my dream now, to be together with my son and his family,” Alrifai said. “I hope one day I see him with me in my house, together beginning a life in this country with him, his wife and his daughter.”