office at the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce inside a half- way renovated home in Fletcher Hills. He immi- grated to the U.S. from Iraq in the 1990s. He is
lims creates super jihad- ist and terrorist extrem- ists. That is bullshit. [My family was] alien- ated, not on purpose, and we adjusted well. We didn’t join ISIS. We
things like that because they are closed in this box of El Cajon. They don’t leave El Cajon. They go to Arabic stores. They converse with their neigh- bors in Arabic. Speak-
“Chaldeans aren’t really fighters. Their whole lives revolve around going to church.”
Ben Kalasho
32 now but looks younger. Even in a perfectly pressed suit with pocket square he looks boyish. “I was nine when I came [to the United States]. My dad used to invest here in the ’80s. We came right before Desert Storm. My father was here and knew they were going to close down flights [from Iraq]. We ended up getting chartered out of there. We left everything behind because we thought we were going to go back. We only had, like, ten grand. After the war happened, our house got bombed and the hotel we used to own got turned into a weapons manufacturer. We ended up having to start from scratch here. It was pretty crazy.” Kalasho feels strongly
that his family benefited from having to assimi- late to their new coun- try. He is concerned that the established Chaldean community in El Cajon has become, in a sense, a hindrance to the Chal- dean refugees coming in now. “It’s funny, I just
read an article about what happened in Brus- sels and people want to attribute [the attack] to alienation. They are say- ing that alienating Mus-
didn’t feel like blowing anything up.” Kalasho continues,
“There are pros that out- weigh the cons of being in America. It’s not the perfect country, noth- ing is, but many times refugees don’t see all the good parts that America has. They complain a lot. They will say things like, ‘I wish Saddam was still there.’ They will say
ing English is eighth on their priority list because they don’t need to learn it. That’s a problem. It is a lot different than the Hispanic community. A Mexican crossing the border and coming over here is starting the initia- tive toward a better life. People coming in from the UN refugee program signed up to come here because it was one of the
countries on a list. They don’t want to come here. That is why I would like to see them more spread out and more diverse.” Kalasho acknowl-
edges that his views are not shared by many others in the Chal- dean community. “[Other Chaldeans]
are going to have a more biblical view. They will say, ‘We have to save all the Christians!’ Mine is a more pragmatic approach. It’s about human beings. I am not going to get behind a Chaldean agenda just because it’s Chaldean. That doesn’t make any sense. The local economy affects me more than the national economy. I care about my home values. A priest at a church, he is going to tell you differ- ently. He wants refugees to come here because he wants to grow his con- gregation. They want more money.
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San Diego Reader April 21, 2016 17
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