DAMASCUS // After nearly 24 hours of exhausting travel from war-ravaged Syria, the Abu Assaleh family arrived in Philadelphia, brimming with excitement to begin their new life in the United States.
The Christian family of eight had waited more than 13 years since first applying for the immigration visas now stamped neatly into their Syrian passports.
On Friday, they travelled from Damascus to Beirut, then Amman and on to Doha, before finally landing at Philadelphia International Airport. But as they shuffled through the airport, an immigration official approached them and asked to see the family’s passports.
“They took us into a special hallway and I started to get nervous,” said Josephine Abu Assaleh, 60, who had travelled to the US with her husband Bassam, his brother Hassaan and Hassaan’s wife and four children. “The officer came back and told us that our visas had been cancelled and we wouldn’t be allowed to enter the United States.”
After more than 20 hours of travel, hopeful anticipation turned to shock and devastation, as the family was informed they would be sent back to Syria after US president Donald Trump’s new restrictions on immigration.
“I told the officer ‘You’re kidding, right?’, and he responded, ‘Do I look like I’m kidding?’,” Josephine said.
Mr Trump’s executive order, signed last Friday, bars entry to the US for travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days.
It also suspends the arrival of all refugees for at least 120 days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Now back in their home in Tijarah district, Damascus, Josephine gestured to nearly 20 suitcases scattered across the house. She spent days shopping for gifts for friends in the US and now cannot bring herself to unpack them.
The family had been applying since 2013 to emigrate to the US. Their visas were finally issued in October.
“It was such a happy feeling to get a visa to America, considering so many countries are fighting us and won’t give us visas,” said Josphine’s husband, Bassam, 62. But the visa in his passport now has a thin blue line through it to show it is cancelled.
“We travelled on January 27 and arrived in Philadelphia where we found, to our surprise, that a decision had been issued to cancel our visas while we were in the air. We thought it was something personal against us.”
After receiving their immigration visas, Bassam’s brother, Hassaan, and his sister-in-law sold their home and their car in Damascus. Their 20-year-old daughter, Sara, began imagining her new life.
“I said goodbye to my friends in school, my neighbours, and all the places that I love,” she said. “It was a beautiful dream that started turning into reality. I started to read a lot about America, the university that I wanted to enrol in and the places I would visit as soon as I arrived.”
Most of all, she was excited at the prospect of being reunited with her brother Tufiq, who left Syria three years ago to study in the US and had been waiting impatiently in the arrivals lounge at Philadelphia.
“The most difficult moments were in the airport, when the police wouldn’t let my mother go out to meet my brother, whom she hadn’t seen in three years,” Sara said. “There were just a few metres between them and my mother collapsed in tears because she wanted to wrap my brother in her arms but couldn’t.”
After pleading fruitlessly with airport officials, Sara’s family was escorted to a departing aircraft without seeing Tufiq.
“I thought my father was going to have a heart attack. We couldn’t eat or sleep on the plane ride back,” Sara said. “We weren’t allowed to have a lawyer or a translator. They robbed us of our simplest rights in a nation that everyone says is the country of laws and human rights.”
* Agence France-Presse
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
