Iraq Refugees Find No Refuge In America
WASHINGTON — Just about every American serving or working in Iraq knows Iraqis who have been loyal to the United States, have risked their lives for Americans and are in serious danger of being killed if they stay in Iraq.Thousands of Iraqis have fled their country, trying to escape the escalating civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. Many of them have lost close relatives and have been threatened with rape, torture or death if they continue to work with Americans.
U.S. journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to interview Iraqis, terrified they will be targeted by death squads for even talking to Americans. Journalists must depend on Iraqi citizens to translate and to arrange interviews in hotel rooms or in secret locations. If found out, the translators and facilitators face torture or death. Yet, still they have continued to help, sometimes because of the money, but just as frequently because they are grateful to the United States.
Many of the Iraqis who welcomed U.S. soldiers after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein live in hiding because they can’t support themselves and can’t get out of the country. Many are terrified of being betrayed by neighbors. If they have Sunni names, they are frightened of Shiites. If they have Shiite names, they are afraid of Sunnis.
Last month, the United States admitted one immigrant from Iraq.
As Congress ties itself up in knots wrangling with the Bush administration over what to do with 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States, it is an absolute scandal that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refuge in America.
Last year, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was leaked to a reporter, revealing the U.S. has no contingency plans to help Iraqis if there is a withdrawal. Apparently, we learned little from the evacuation of Saigon. Even Iraqis who have been physically threatened for helping top U.S. government officials or translating for the military are not being given visas.
Americans are dying every day in Iraq, ostensibly to help that country be free, yet Iraqis make up less than 1 percent of the total foreign-born population in the United States. Only about 90,000 people born in Iraq live in the United States, and nearly all of them were in the United States before the current war began.
President Bush, determined to stay the course in Iraq, has never spoken publicly about the problem of what is happening to Iraqis loyal to the Americans but caught in the deadly crossfire, first, from the insurgency and now a civil war. He has never spoken of our responsibility to help them.
Bush wants immigrants here illegally to have a process to gain citizenship, but he has done nothing to help Iraqis endangered because they have helped us after we invaded their country. He has not even ordered American consul officials in Baghdad to grant visas to Iraqis most at risk. If they can get out of Iraq, they have a better chance of going to London than of going to New York.
The United Nations reports that 40,000 Iraqis every month are losing their homes and becoming refugees. This has become the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the upheaval that greeted the creation of Israel nearly 60 years ago. According to U.N. estimates, there may be as many as 3.7 million Iraqis made homeless inside and outside the country by the violence. Some are being compensated by their losses if the U.S. military is responsible; most flee with nothing.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, acutely aware of criticism over America’s closed-door policy for Iraqis, is working on a plan that would permit up to 20,000 Iraqis into the country. But Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2008 would spend only $35 million on the entire problem of Iraqi refugees, one-seventh of the amount refugee experts say is needed.
The United States is afraid that letting fleeing Iraqis into the country would let in some terrorists as well, although there are many new post-9/11 precautions and verification measures in place aimed at preventing that. But the damage to the U.S. reputation as millions see a cold shoulder turned to those who tried to help is just as dangerous.
Word is spreading quickly that in Iraq, if you help Americans, your days may well be numbered and your death will be a painful one because the Americans will not help you in return.
Scripps Howard columnist Ann McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986. E-mail amcfeatters(at)hotmail.com.
© 1998-2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
this administration, in addition to having it’s head up it’s ass, it’s foot in it’s mouth and both hands in the cookie jar is somehow able to survive without a heart. but as troubling as that is to contemplate, it is bitterly ironic that worry over letting terrorists into the country deflects attention from the terrorists who are leading it.
This leaves us with torture as the only source of information. Volunteering information is not worth any amount of money if you are dead.
The obvious solution is to hide threatened Iraqi translators in caskets and fly them into Dover AFB in the middle of the night.
It works for secreting our fallen troops into the USA.
born2bwild: Kind of makes me want to start a citizens’ initiative to sue the makers of whatever the THING is that keeps Cheney’s inhuman heart beating? If the old boy went out with nature’s knock, rather than artificially kept alive, think how many others might be alive in their homelands today? (I know, many will argue they WANT that medical device to save their loved ones. Fine. Your loved ones probably are not so direct a part of a death machine that consigns others to premature murders.)
Sick, weird and utterly insane! Are the present occupiers of the White House and of the soveriegn nation of Iraq blithely oblivious to the fact that our stance towards the Iraqi refugees must be creating more persons who are angry enough to become the terrorists we fear? (Or do they suspect the truth and, consequently, fear all Iarqis?)
dearrow’s suggestion for smuggling in Iraqis along with the planeloads of dead US troops is a good one. God knows there are enough of those planes flying.
I opposed the Vietnam war but supoported admitting those who helped us. Bush, you did it agai.
the potential problem with admitting iraqi refugees is that it will create a void in the populace, and hurt the (eventual) rebuilding process. even if we had set large caps on the amount of iraqi refugees applicable for transit, the eventual reality would be that an entire country would have been drained of its labor and middle class. already, many have left for neighboring countries, with no plans of return. what would happen if a sudden upswell of Iraqi civilians and “potential insurgency” (in the eyes of the fearful and uneducated) were to appear on America’s soil?
is there an alternative…?
Syria, member of Bush’s “axis of evil”, as we know, has so far received 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, both Sunnis and Shiites, which has driven up the cost of living in Syria quite dramatically. The Syrian school system has trouble coping with this wave of refugees as well.
UNHCR is helping out, but the ones who caused that exodus, i.e. Americans, neither accept Iraqi refugees themselves nor do they help those who do and basically clean up after them.
The people who want to leave Iraq have every right to, and it is really disgusting to say they should be made to stay there in order to to work in sweatshops conditions and be subject to the violent chaos caused by the occupation.
In rebuttal ,all one hears is the tired , hackneyed phrase repeated times without number : ” You have to break eggs to have your omlette”.
Well, hasn’t the ‘benighted’ rest of the world paid a terrible price for the West’s insatiable passion for gourmet omlettes : Korea, Suez (1956), Katanga (1906) ,Vietnam , Iran (1953) , Iraq -and countless other ‘brushfires” like Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Salvador .
We cannot even rebuild the world trade center or New Orleans. Have we ever rebuilt another country?
I believe the people who helped should be allowed to come here. I wonder if that was another Bush lie like Bush 1 lied after the Kuwait invasion and watched Iraqis being slaughtered who helped.
I can understand why everyone hates us.
I am sorry for all the people suffering in Iraq. I opposed the first war, the sanctions, and this fiasco.
But bringing them here is no answer.
They deserved to have their own country and to be left to run their lives as they see fit. Anything less than that may make us feel less guilty but will not undo the damage. IT CAN’T BE UNDONE.
If Iraq is ever to be a good place to live they need all their people and support without interference.
refuge -”shelter or protection from danger or distress” - webster’s dictionary
we should pay their way here, put them up for as long as it takes to ensure they will be safe upon returning (if ever). and top of all that, beg their forgiveness for what we have done.
Is there a pattern here? Go to war without sufficient thought of the consequences. Lose the war. Bring the refugees here who helped us so they aren’t killed thus adding to an already overpopulated USA. Junk all the hardware and resources squandered in the war and leave that and the wrecked ecosystems there for the natives to salvage or cleanup. When will we ever learn?
Malthus2, the USA are one of the least populated countries on earth, I don’t know what you are talking about. A place like texas is the size of Germany and has 1/5th of its population. Wake up! If it was good enough for your ancestors to settle there, it surely is good enough for others as well, if they have nowhere else to go because of America’s foolish wars - which probably wasn’t exactly the reason why your ancestors settled there.
Jordan, Syria, and Egypt are already having difficulties coping with the influx of Iraqi refugees. In addition, Jordan is already home to millions of Palestinian refugees. Consequently, Pakistan and Iran have also sheltered millions of Afghan refugees and have forced many to return to Afghanistan which doesn’t have the infrastructure to support them even with reconstruction. We should allow more Iraqi and Afghan refugees in.