Iraqi citizenship stories take hopeful turn
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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Close behind Sunday’s Lincoln Marathon comes news of a longer and more grueling journey.
Hussain Alamiri’s push toward the finish line must be measured in years and in thousands of miles.
It covers 10 years in a refugee camp in the Saudi desert — picking sand out of his teeth in a small tent with nine other men who had fought against Saddam Hussein, battling a malady that would leave his balance impaired.
It covers the sudden trip to the unknown of Atlanta, Ga., in 2000, his reunion with his friend and fellow camp refugee, Majid Alhijam, in Lincoln later that year, and another seven years of waiting.
Now, long after Saddam’s army crowded him out of his native country, Hussain Alamiri is a citizen of the United States.
A few months ago, he rose from his chair in Omaha to take the citizenship oath.
“I feel this is my best day in many years,” he said.
Many from Lincoln’s Iraqi community tell similar stories of struggling toward the sense of acceptance that comes with a green card or citizenship papers.
More of those stories are now reaching happier endings here and elsewhere. That’s largely because the FBI has caught up to its goal of processing thousands of people who have been waiting for name check clearance for more than four years.
They’re now working on the three-year list.
Jerry Heinauer, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration service center in Lincoln, acknowledged there are people from Iraq, Somalia and other countries still waiting years after they made their emergency exit or sought to do so.
That includes “Miss Nancy,” an Iraqi interpreter who worked with the Lincoln-based 67th Area Support Group in Iraq in 2006. She is in Baghdad, awaiting clearance to come to the U.S. under a program aimed at those who provided vital services to American forces.
“But the good news,” said Heinauer, “is that we have an agreement with the FBI and that things are clearing so much faster than they were previously.”
Majid Alhijam — who started work on permanent residency and green card status in 2000, who volunteered to return to Iraq in 2004 and again in 2005 as a translator for American troops — just got his card three months ago.
Alhijam ran the full marathon in Lincoln Sunday in just under five hours. But he is aware of how the finish line in what might be called the immigration marathon can move without notice.
“July 8, it will be 11 years,” he said, since he waved to his friend, Hussain Alamiri, and left the Saudi refugee camp.
It has been 17 years since he has seen his mother, now 73, or his two brothers and three sisters in his hometown of Basra.
Recently, one of his sisters was shot twice in the legs and her husband was kidnapped. He remains missing and presumed dead.
“When I got my green card, right away I filed for citizenship.”
His urgency comes from wanting to see his family and from the freedom to travel his citizenship status gives him.
As Alamiri sits with Majid in his small N Street apartment Tuesday, he must steady his voice as he tells about the death of his father. It happened about two years ago, almost two decades after he had last seen him.
His mother, eight sisters and a brother live in Basra. His brother was 6 when he left. Now he’s married.
The two plan to return to their hometown together as soon as Majid can get his citizenship.
Perhaps because he was exposed to Saddam’s biological weapons, Alamiri could not travel without help.
“When I need to walk, I feel I will lose my balance,” said a man who was once a champion swimmer.
As surely as there are others who look at Iraqis with suspicion, there are Southeast Nebraskans who count themselves in their rooting sections.
Gretna middle school teacher Jim Oliver remains in e-mail contact with Miss Nancy about every 10 days. That’s almost two years after Oliver, a major in the 67th Area Support Group, last saw a woman whose real identity he dares not divulge.
“She is just waiting,” he said. “She’s on the list. All her paperwork is in.”
The U.S. allows 500 interpreters a year every fiscal year, he said, and they’ve used up their allotment. So she’s awaiting next fiscal year — which starts in October.
Oliver draws little comfort from the knowledge Miss Nancy is in Baghdad and away from potential clashes between Americans and insurgents.
“I’m more worried,” he said, “because she’s away from U.S. forces.”
Dixie Mulligan keeps in touch with Hussain Alamiri more than four years after she started helping him as a volunteer with the Lincoln Literacy Council.
“We still do occasionally do lessons,” Mulligan said, “because I love to teach him. But mostly we get together because I like him to get experience with normal American habits and daily living.”
One of their trips took them to Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice about 18 months ago, where her friend witnessed a citizenship ceremony.
“He sat there and he cried … and he said the next time he was there he wanted it to be him.”
It happened instead in Omaha, on a day when they were uncertain whether he would get all the way through the remaining citizenship steps. “He was (walking) on air that day,” Mulligan said.
Lincoln resident Joyce Perry has repeatedly interceded on behalf of Iraqi friends with the state’s congressional delegation and immigration officials.
Perry feels gratified by the progress Iraqis have made with new lives in a new country. “I’m just so glad things are happening for them,” she said.
But experience has taught her to expect uneven quality in the response from immigration officials. She hears about lost files and names entered backward.
Lincoln resident Haider Al-Turki, a father of four, is still waiting for his name to get FBI clearance 11 years after his arrival.
“I called,” Al-Turki said. “They just said to wait.”
He said his wife, who came with him from Iraq, got her citizenship eight years ago.
Immigration official Heinauer said it takes time to do the job right.
“I think people can appreciate the fact that we’re vigilant,” he said, “that we don’t grant a benefit to people who are not entitled to it, especially people that are a national security threat.”
But Khalat Almuzory, who remembers the long name check phase before he got his citizenship about two years ago, said the immigration wheels are grinding along more efficiently in Lincoln than they were as recently as mid-2007.
“People now have some hope,” he said. “Before they had no anything.”
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.
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