Lebanese evacuees' plea: Let us stay in U.S.

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http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060802/METRO/608020341/1003

August 2, 2006
Evacuees' plea: Let us stay in U.S.
Group works to secure temporary resident status for Lebanese taking refuge in Mich.

Gregg Krupa / The Detroit News


LATHRUP VILLAGE -- Advocates for Lebanese citizens who are seeking refuge in Metro Detroit fear they will be forced to return too soon to the war zone and humanitarian disaster that is Lebanon.

They hope to persuade Washington to do what it did in the 1980s, at the height of the civil war in Lebanon: Grant temporary resident status to some Lebanese citizens until their country is safer.

The Basma family hopes to stay in the United States for longer than currently allowed.

Two of Zeinab Basma's children, Kassem, 11, and Alaa, 7, were born here. The other two, Ali, 12, and Aya, 4, were born in Lebanon and, like their mother, are Lebanese citizens. After bombs started falling around them in southern Lebanon on July 12, Zeinab says she wondered what the United States would do when they asked to be evacuated.

She says she should not have worried. "The Americans are the people who help," Basma said. "We were treated so kindly and gently."

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