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Liberated.

Jill

refugees

via Norbizness, we learn that the number of Iraqi refugees in the United States is very, very low. Thank goodness we exported democracy and freedom so that they can safely stay in their home country!

From an article Norbizness found:

The United Nations estimates that some 750,000 Iraqi refugees have fled to Jordan, while some 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria in recent years. Amman says hosting the Iraqis in Jordan has cost the country about $1 billion a year.

…oh.

Our current immigration policy only allows 500 Iraqis to settle here next year. Many, many more than that need someplace to go, since their country has been torn apart and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be fixed any time soon. Who tore their country apart? Well, we did. Who created this massive refugee crisis? Yep, us again. So whose responsibility is it to clean up the mess? The UN’s, obviously:

But few Iraqi refugees have yet to be allowed to resettle here, due partly to finger-pointing between the State Department and the United Nations over who is responsible for determining which Iraqis need to be resettled. Sauerbrey said she has been pleading with the United Nations to do its job of surveying refugees.

“We have not been getting referrals from [the United Nations],” she said, pointing to the office of the UN high commissioner for refugees. “They have got to do a better job.”

What did we say about the UN back in the day when we were gearing up for the Iraq war? That we didn’t need them? That we would go at it with our “coalition of the willing”? Right. Now it’s their job to fix things.

Allowing Iraqis to take refuge in the United States would be bad for the current administration, and we can’t have that. Sure, it might mean that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will be without a place to call home, but better that than actually help them.

An effort by hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to resettle in the United States would put the Bush administration in an extraordinarily awkward position. Having waged war to liberate Iraqis, the United States would in effect be admitting failure if it allowed a substantial number of Iraqis to be classified as refugees who could seek asylum here.

Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey, who was President Bush’s assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs until last year, said that “for political reasons the administration will discourage” the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States “because of the psychological message it would send, that it is a losing cause.”

4 thoughts on Liberated.

  1. Our current immigration policy only allows 500 Iraqis to settle here next year.

    That policy has since been amended.

    Of course, the likelihood of 7,000 Iraqis (still a piddling figure when compared to the actual numbers in need) being settled in the US by September is slim to none:

    As Iraqis continue to flee their country in record numbers, adding to what is already the largest refugee population in the world, U.S. efforts to accept them are moving at a snail’s pace. Officials predict that at most only 2,000, or less than 30 percent, of the 7,000 can be processed by Sept. 30.

  2. In Jordan, there has been restrictions imposed on Iraqi refugees and the Iraqi refugee communities aren’t faring too well in Syria, although Syria is where most Iraqi refugees are going to.

    It looks pretty grim for the Iraqi families, especially those whose loved ones have been killed.

    Then again, it’s “Mission Accomplished” for the war profiteers. After all, as long as they are making money off this war (and they still are), they won’t care about those who died.

  4. Much as I hate to defend the administration, I work in refugee resettlement and so have perhaps a different perspective.

    7000 by October of 2008 is not a bad number. The first 7000 are expected to be mostly American collaborators and religious minorities, for whom the UN expects Iraq will not be safe in the forseeable future. The door is still open for more to be resettled, if Iraq continues to be dangerous *for their particular group*. The UN’s favorite solution for refugees is to return them to their home country, so they generally don’t resettle a particular category (religious minorities, political dissidents, persecuted ethnicities) until they’re sure the situation won’t calm down. So according to UNHCR, certain categories of Iraqis might still be able to return sometime in the forseeable future.

    Secondly, this is a really fast resettlement, comparatively. It’s not unusual for refugees to be in camps for 10 years before someone agrees to resettle them. We are still getting Somalis who fled their country in 1991 and Burundians who fled in 1973. Since the Iraq invasion was only 5 years ago, we’re resettling people who have been displaced for less than that. Which is pretty impressive, and also explains why UNHCR is keeping the number pretty restricted for now– the conflict isn’t old by their standards.

    We definitely won’t see 7000 by September, but my office and all the others are gearing up for a flood this month and next. Iraqis are the priority group for the coming fiscal year (starts Oct. 1), so all 7000 should easily be here within a year. Once they’re here, they can start filing for members of their family, so the numbers will increase regardless of what happens in Iraq. I was actually really surprised that they’re allowing resettlement so soon, because it IS tantamount to admitting that Iraq is never going to be safe for religious minorities and American collaborators in the forseeable future. It’s actually an indicator of how bad the war is going that they’re resettling so soon.

    And unfortunately, we do rely entirely on UNHCR for referrals. They’re notoriously slow (bureaucracy plus hanging onto hope for return) but I think it’s better to have some kind of sorta-objective standard for who needs to be resettled than have each country determine it on their own. In this case, it seems like UNHCR just can’t keep up with the rate at which Iraq is collapsing.

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