On Iraqi Refugees in America

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 6/02/2007 12:47:00 AM
The Associated Press notes that the US is set to take in more refugees from Iraq, but not a whole lot of them:
The United States will soon begin admitting a bigger trickle of the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Iraq, acknowledging for the first time the country may never be safe for some who have helped the United States there.

After months of agonizing delays and withering criticism from advocacy groups and lawmakers, the Bush administration has finalized new guidelines to screen Iraqi refugees, including those seeking asylum because helping the Americans has put them at huge risk.

The 2 million-plus people -- the fastest growing refugee population in the world -- have left Iraq, but Washington has balked at allowing them into the United States for security reasons.

Since the war began in 2003, fewer than 800 Iraqi refugees have been admitted, angering critics who argued the United States is obligated to assist many more, particularly those whose work for American agencies or contractors placed them in danger.

Now, under enhanced screening measures aimed at weeding out potential terrorists -- announced this week by the Department of Homeland Security -- the administration plans to allow nearly 7,000 Iraqis to resettle in the United States by the end of September.

An initial group of 59, including former US government employees and their families, should arrive in the coming weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

As with incoming refugees from other countries, Iraqis accepted for resettlement in the United States will be given assistance from both government and private aid agencies, including language and job training in the communities that will be their new homes, officials said.

It seems to me that the United States has been extraordinarily stingy in granting refugee status to more Iraqis. True, there already were a lot of misplaced persons under Saddam Hussein's regime, but few would argue that things have not gotten better under American occupation. The UN High Council for Refugees has more on the ongoing dismemberment of what was once Iraq:

Incessant violence across much of Iraq's central and southern regions is forcing thousands of people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a looming humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war.

UNHCR estimates there are some 1.9 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 2 million in neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. Egypt hosts an estimated Iraqi population of more than 100,000, and in 2006 Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Much of UNHCR's work in the first three years since the fall of the previous Iraqi regime was based on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilise and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would soon be able to go home. In 2006, however, spiralling violence led to increasing displacement, necessitating a reassessment of UNHCR's work and its priorities throughout the region – from assisting returns and aiding some 50,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, to providing more help to the thousands who are fleeing every month.

Between 2003 and 2005, some 300,000 Iraqis did return home, including from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and other countries. Now, however, the returns have stopped and many more people are fleeing, including large numbers of skilled professionals crucial to Iraq's recovery.

As Colin Powell once said, the invasion of Iraq works on the Pottery Barn rule that if you break it, you own it. The same holds with regard to migration. The piddling number of refugees from Iraq to the US so far should be compared with migrant flows from another foreign misadventure with tragic consequences, Vietnam. By that standard, the US is still far behind in numerical terms. I hope this situation is remedied in the near future. Here is a short excerpt on the refugee waves from Vietnam by the Austin American-Statesman:

Four waves of migration from Vietnam to the United States took place beginning in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, according to Vu Pham, director and curator of the Smithsonian Institution's Vietnamese American Heritage Project, a traveling exhibition that premiered in Washington in January.

About 1.4 million Vietnamese live in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area, there are about 9,600 people of Vietnamese descent, largely the descendants of refugees.

Before 1975 there were more than 30,000 Vietnamese living in the U.S., comprising scholars, children of Vietnamese government officials and officers serving in the U.S. military.

The fall of Saigon marked the first major exodus of refugees, Pham said. About 110,000 to 120,000 Vietnamese are estimated to have arrived in the United States. This group also included scholars, government officials and employees, military personnel and their families.

A second, smaller wave occurred from 1976 to around 1978. The largest and riskiest exodus was that of the "boat people," who escaped Vietnam between 1978 and 1982.

Estimates of boat people who died vary from less than a million to 2 million, Pham said. A few hundred thousand boat people ended up in the United States.

A fourth wave occurred from about 1983 onward, Pham said: family members who were reunited with immigrants already in the United States; those who arrived as part of federal programs for political prisoners; and "Amerasians," who were born during the war to American fathers and Vietnamese mothers.