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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - King Abdullah II made his people an extraordinary promise last week: For every job the government offered Syrian refugees, it would five jobs for Jordanians.

But officials had previously pledged to 200,000 jobs for Syrians, so the king’s promise means that the government will have to 1.2 million jobs. That task, daunting for any large, industrialized country, will be nearly impossible for tiny Jordan, with a population of 7.5 million and an unemployment rate hovering around 22 percent.

Jawad Anani, a Jordanian economist and senator, said King Abdullah’s words were probably intended only to “comfort” Jordanians and not to be taken literally. Even so, the pledge was a recognition of the pressures on Jordan’s leaders as they hear appeals from a public overwhelmed by the refugees and from European nations urging Jordan to integrate the Syrians and deter them from heading to Western shores.

Since it gained independence from Britain in 1946, Jordan has given refuge to waves of migrants fleeing regional conflicts: Palestinians, Iraqis and now Syrians. But the country is struggling with increasingly difficult economic conditions, including a high unemployment rate, especially among women and young people. Jordan is now home to more than 1.4 million Syrians, including over 600,000 refugees who have arrived since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011, officials say.

Nongovernment organizations and international aid groups generally see to the needs of refugees placed in camps. But in Jordan, most of the Syrians are scattered in cities and towns, straining the resources of schools, hospitals and other services and fueling a festering resentment among Jordanians. This is especially true in the northern border towns, like Mafraq, whose representatives King Abdullah addressed last week and where Syrians now constitute a majority of the population.

At a conference in London this month to solicit support for Syrian refugees, donors pledged $2.1 billion to Jordan over the next three years, along with other assistance. But after the conference, Jordanian representatives made it clear that the money came with conditions, including the provision of jobs for 200,000 Syrian refugees.

But analysts are puzzled over how the government intends to enough jobs, with some investors now fleeing Jordan for reasons that include the unabating regional turmoil. Ahmad Awad, the director of the Amman-based Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies, said the plan to legalize the Syrian workers was part of a parallel effort to lure back foreign investment, with the cooperation of Western countries.

That new investment, in turn, could translate into jobs for Jordanians, he said. But, he added, “The devil is in the details.”

Officials here are taking pains to assure Jordanians that they will come first. During a meeting with editors of daily newspapers and columnists to talk about the London conference, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said Syrian refugees would not compete with Jordanians for job opportunities. He said that Syrians “will be allowed to work in jobs usually shunned by Jordanians.”

Economists and researchers are debating the reasons for high unemployment rates among Jordanians and the economic impact of Syrian refugees. According to the International Labour Organization, “Jordan has a very high population of nonnationals and over half the new jobs created annually are reportedly filled by foreign workers.”

Syrians often take the jobs held by migrant workers like Egyptians, in construction and agriculture, but also those of the poorest 14 percent of Jordanians, who accept less than the minimum wage.

Mr. Anani, the economist, said that it would represent progress if 50,000 to 60,000 jobs could be created every year. The king, he said, was simply trying to say that “our duty is to jobs for our people, before we jobs for others.”

*NYT