> What makes things worse, Syria is sanctioned which means American companies cannot hire any Syrian because there's a legality issue. Meaning even Syrian refugees who fled the country cannot find a proper job.

My understand is that "a refugee" and having residency (permanent or not) are two separate and unrelated things.

Refugee = outside your country for a specific set of reasons you can find on Wikipedia.

What I meant was that being a refugee doesn't prevent EU companies from hiring you. I'm well aware of how terrible sanctions are, but not all EU countries have the exact same set of blockade/embargo as American ones. In general, work laws and authorization between any two countries that don't have explicit agreement tend to be difficult.