Destined for Detroit

DETROIT

The federal government resettled Mazen Alsaqa in Massachusetts in February. Within a month, the Iraqi refugee moved to Michigan.

It wasn’t that Mr. Alsaqa disliked Worcester, Mass., but he never thought twice about staying. Even though the government tried to keep him away from the Detroit area and its soaring unemployment rate, that was the only place Mr. Alsaqa wanted to live.

Tens of thousands have fled Michigan’s troubled economy in recent years, yet Iraqi refugees continue to move there despite a U.S. government policy trying to limit refugee resettlement in the Detroit area. Family ties and cultural support from the region’s large Middle Eastern community appear no match for the federal effort, which tries to place refugees in cities where they stand a better chance of financial success.

“What the government gives you as a support is not a great deal. … If you’d like to live decently, you should have a live connection - that’s your family here in Michigan,” said Mr. Alsaqa, 34, who lives in suburban Birmingham with family.

Southeastern Michigan has one of the country’s largest Middle Eastern populations - about 300,000 can trace their roots back to the region - and has long been a top destination for Arab immigrants to the United States.

Kabobs are easier to come by than Big Macs in some areas of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn that more closely resemble a city in the Middle East than the Midwest. Arabic signs are common on storefronts, many women wear head scarves, and at some fast-food joints in the city, the meat is halal - meaning it is prepared according to Islamic law.

But as Michigan’s auto industry crumbled and thousands were laid off, the State Department decided in June 2008 to limit the number of Iraqi refugees it sent to the area to only those with close family members such as parents or siblings.

The policy was issued as the U.S. government began increasing the overall number of Iraqis it granted refugee status. Between July 2008 and September, the U.S. resettled 3,400 Iraqis in the Detroit area - about 13 percent of the total number of Iraqi refugees who came to the U.S.

But that hasn’t stopped Iraqis from coming to Michigan.

At least 460 Iraqi refugees have come on their own to Michigan since July 2008 after first being told to resettle somewhere else, according to Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, one of the state’s primary refugee agencies and the only one that collects such data in Michigan on what is known as secondary migration. “Whether the economy is good or bad, you’re still going to have secondary migration to Detroit because of historical and cultural significance,” said Elizabeth Campbell, senior advocate of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Refugees International.

That was the case with Mr. Alsaqa. It was a relative in the Detroit area who helped him land jobs teaching nursing students and tutoring.

“Without these connections, I couldn’t figure out how I could do it,” said Mr. Alsaqa, who is studying to obtain his medical doctor certification.

The same was true for Rawaa Bahoo and Sinan Shamsulddin. Both Iraqi refugees never intended to stay where the U.S. government relocated them in July 2008. Miss Bahoo, 29, said she stayed just a few days in Atlanta before heading to Michigan, where relatives could help her overcome her language barrier. An uncle and other relatives in Michigan helped Mr. Shamsulddin, 21, get a job assisting cooks in a Detroit-area restaurant - the main reason why he left Vermont after about a week.

“There’s a lot of [people from my] community here,” Mr. Shamsulddin said in Arabic through an interpreter.

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