Abandoned. Adrift. Enduring. (via The Chicago Tribune)

“A safe home. A good job. Stability for their children after years on the run from death threats and the mayhem of war — that is what the Iraqi refugees envisioned when told they were coming to America.

Instead, one family is assigned an apartment on Chicago’s North Side so full of cockroaches and filth they couldn’t stay the night.

A veterinarian from southern Iraq relies on relatives in Karbala to pay his rent in Chicago, upending the traditional immigrant experience.

An Iraqi mother of three, unable to pay her rent with her husband still in the Middle East, finds little help warding off the predatory advances of male acquaintances offering assistance.

“This is what they brought us when they invaded our country?” cried Wafaa Falah, 40, a Baghdad refugee handed food stamps and a bus pass when she arrived at her new apartment in West Rogers Park. “They don’t care about us. They brought us here and abandoned us.” (Read More)