Vivien Yaghob is a refugee assistance coordinator at International Rescue Committee in Turlock. She was recently honored as one of the IRC's top refugee directors in the world. November 4, 2009 (BART AH YOU/bahyou@modbee.com) - -
By Adam Ashton
aashton@modbee.com
Vivien Yaghobsalmasi saw the makings for a surge of Middle Eastern refugees moving to Stanislaus County well before the flood hit.It was just a matter of waiting until two trends converged to quintuple the number of refugees coming to the county over just three years.One was a rising number of Assyrian families in Turlock and Modesto with Iranian roots filing papers to help their relatives move to California through refugee resettlement programs.The second was the war in Iraq, which was bound to draw Assyrian refugees from that country.They came in dozens in 2004, and then in the hundreds by 2006. Last year, 505 refugees settled in Stanislaus County, nearly all of them from Iran or Iraq.They came just like Yaghobsalmasi, who arrived in San Jose as a refugee from Tehran in 1990: Few possessions, few friends and facing difficult job prospects in a weak economy.
