The life of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who dreamt the American dream and supported the U.S. invasion of their country is now in a limbo.

“A horror story lands across my desk every day,” said Ellen Sauerbrey, who made an unsuccessful bid for Maryland Governor in 1994, and was later picked by President Bush as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration. She was speaking at a panel organized by the Center for the Study of Democracy – headed by Political Science Asst. Prof. Zach Messitte – at St. Mary’s College Monday afternoon.

 
 Sauerbrey – The Bay Net Photo by Ahmar Mustikhan

She said recently an Iraqi helping the U.S forces faced a dirty threat. “A dog’s head was thrown in his yard with a letter warning, ‘This will happen to you if you do not leave Iraq immediately.’”

On the other hand the Governor of Ohio came out with a statement that he would not allow a single Iraqi refugee to be settled in his state, Sauerbrey told students of the political science department. After a public outrage, the governor retracted his statement.

“Right now my office is focused on helping the many refugees that have fled from Iraq,” Sauerbrey said. She said a refugee crisis was feared in Iraq at the start of the war in 2003, but things worsened with sectarian war that erupted in the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Samara mosque.

In the last four years, the U.S. has spent 800 million dollars on Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons in Iraq, said Sauerbrey.

According to Sauerbrey the Iraqi refugees were facing major challenges in Syria and Jordan, where most failed to recognize their status as refugees.  Both Syria and Jordan look upon the presence of Iraqi refugees as “a real destabilizing factor,” said Sauerbrey. In the case of Jordan, the country has closed their borders to young men of military age, preventing them from entering.

Sauerbrey said the flip side of Iraqis wanting to flee their country is that the U.S. needs their services as translators and interpreters. Calling herself an eternal optimist, Sauerbrey hoped that a surge would help improve the ground situation.

Sauerbrey, once a science teacher, has strong political roots in Maryland and was thrice elected as house delegate and competed for the governor’s office in 1994 elections. She spent an entire day at St. Mary’s College campus last week.

Sauerbrey acknowledged not many refugees return to their home countries, but said under certain circumstances large numbers of them do return, as in the case of Liberia and Afghanistan.

“The United States provides 600 million dollars a year in assistance to refugees. Another 400 million dollars is spent on settling the refugees,” Sauerbrey said.

She narrated the story of a Chinese man marrying a Balkan woman in Charlotte, North Carolina. The couple started a successful noodle business, exemplifying to Sauerbrey how people’s entrepreneurial powers can be unleashed in an environment of political freedom.

“Last year the U.S accepted 41,500 refugees from 67 different countries,” she said.

Yet Sauerbrey also told a woeful tale of child refugees. “I have seen little children sitting on the floor,