Refugee ‘lost hope’ in Syria, but rediscovered it in the U.S.

It was the snowiest winter Park City had seen in years. Nour Haji, wearing a T-shirt despite the freezing temperatures, backed his white Toyota Camry toward a snowbank to turn around.

“How has your night been?” he asked, peering into the rearview mirror at his Lyft passenger in back.

Just over a year ago, Haji, 26, was still living in Turkey, having fled his home in Syria and become a refugee. He had longed to go to the United States ever since he was a teenager, when he begged his father to let him study there.

He arrived in Utah with his mother and sister in late 2015 and started working as a ride-hailing driver a few months ago. The side job paid decently and was a great chance to keep working on his English.

Back in Syria, he was always at the top of his class in English. He liked to watch American movies and invent conversations in his head to practice, consulting a translating app on his phone whenever he got stuck. Now it was paying off.

But people like Haji will no longer be allowed into the United States under an executive order signed by President Trump on Friday. The order suspends refugee admissions for 120 days and indefinitely bans refugees from Syria.

Haji and his family, who are Kurdish, fled their home in central Aleppo in 2012. The Syrian conflict had started a year earlier, and though heavy bombing wasn’t yet a staple of life in the northwestern Syrian city, conditions had already become difficult.

“There were no jobs, no safety, no money, no incomes,” he said. “You just needed to leave to be able to get a life.”

So Haji and his mother, father, sister and two brothers took refuge in a village in northern Aleppo province, where they owned a home and some land. A few days later, most of them sneaked across the border into Turkey. His eldest brother stayed behind because he worried he would not be able to support his wife and four young daughters.

Haji struggled to find work in Turkey, at one point going five months without a job. When he did work, it was long hours and little pay in construction, sales or textiles, he said.

On the advice of another brother who had moved to Canada before the war, Haji, his mother and his sister visited a U.N. office in Istanbul to see if they could start the process of resettlement. They were interviewed at length later in the capital, Ankara. His father and brother were skeptical and skipped the interview.

The process of refugee resettlement usually begins with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Chris Boian, a spokesman for the agency.

First, a person has to meet the legal definition of refugee: somebody who has been forced to flee his or her country because of war, violence, or a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

There are vastly more refugees than countries have agreed to resettle. After screening and interviewing candidates, the United Nations refers as many as it can to third countries for consideration. Women and children at risk, victims of violence or torture, refugees with medical needs and members of persecuted minorities get priority. The agency also tries to reunify families.

Refugees do not get to choose where they will be sent. The United Nations provides host countries with lists of eligible candidates and those countries then do their own vetting and decide who gets in.

In the United States, the screening for resettlement includes a series of background checks, interviews, fingerprinting and medical checks conducted by the State Department, National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and other intelligence agencies.

Applicants who pass all those tests then face additional screening by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and are checked against flight watch lists before they are finally allowed to board planes to the United States. The entire process takes 18 to 24 months on average.

“Refugees are screened more carefully than any other type of traveler to the U.S.,” says an overview of the process on the State Department’s website.

Trump has ordered a review of the screening process and instructed the secretary of State and other officials to identify and put in place additional measures “to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat.”

Nearly two years after his initial visit to the U.N. office, Haji landed in Los Angeles with his mother and sister in November 2015. A few days later, they arrived in Salt Lake City, where they had relatives.

“The life here — it’s kind of difficult and the cultures are way different, but I’m growing used to it,” he said.

He found work as a carpet cleaner but he quit a few weeks ago because he felt the pay was too little. While he looks for other employment, he gets by with his Lyft job.

In just the first four days of the Sundance Film Festival, which started Jan. 19 in Park City, he had made $2,000, he said.

Eventually Haji hopes to go to college to study engineering.

“In Turkey and in Syria I lost my hope — I felt like maybe I’m dying,” he said. “But now, here, I have hope. I know if I work hard, in the future my life is going to be better.”

Not all members of his family have been so lucky.

While the brother who came with him to Turkey made it to Germany after a dangerous journey by sea and land through Greece, his father returned to northern Aleppo, joining Haji’s eldest brother.

They cannot go home to the city of Aleppo, which was once a thriving commercial center but has been devastated by the six-year conflict between rebels and the Syrian government.

Under the refugee program as it stood before Trump’s executive order, people with refugee status could petition for spouses and unmarried children to join them. But they faced more hurdles when it came to siblings and parents.

Now, Haji’s father and brother have no chance of moving to the United States in the foreseeable future.

“If I could, I would try to bring them tomorrow,” said Haji. “But it’s like asking, can you touch the clouds? No, you can’t.”

Haji said he had a message for Trump. “A few hundred years ago there was no America,” he said. “America was built by refugees.”

“I’m working here like any American,” he said. “I’m paying taxes. I work more jobs than maybe the average person. I’m not asking for any help. The only thing I need is to stay safe.”

nina.agrawal@latimes.com

Twitter: @AgrawalNina

UPDATES:

Jan. 27, 6:45 p.m. This article was updated with information about the executive order signed by President Trump.

This article was originally published Jan. 26 at 6:20 p.m.