WASHINGTON (AP) — Ammar Rashed has a stack of letters from U.S. troops attesting to his work during some of the most dangerous days of the Iraq War. But six years after he applied to immigrate to the United States under a program for interpreters who helped America, he is still waiting.
“You don't have to keep me and my family suffering for, for years waiting,” said Rashed during a Skype interview from Jordan, where he lives. “It's really frustrating.”
Rashed is among thousands of Iraqis, many of whom risked their lives by working closely with Americans during the war and its aftermath, trying to enter the U.S. An estimated 164,000 Iraqis already have found homes in America.
U.S. officials cite multiple reasons for the delays, including an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, a hack of a refugee database, the COVID-19 pandemic and cuts to the refugee program under then-President Donald Trump.
Sometimes the process is slowed as applicants struggle to prove their ties to the U.S.
Mohammed Subhi Hashim al-Shafeay, his wife and four children have been in limbo for a dozen years while he tries to document his work for a U.S. security contractor at the Iraqi Justice Ministry.
They are living as refugees in Jordan. But al-Shafeay cannot work and cannot afford to send his oldest child, a high school senior, to college. His youngest children feel resented at school because Iraqi refugees this year were…
