WASHINGTON, 6 February 2008 — The State Department said on Monday that 1,324 refugees came to the United States during the last four months as part of a program to welcome 12,000 Iraqis by Sept. 30.
The number of Iraqis driven from their homes since the war began in 2003 now stands at between 3.2 and more than four million, according to estimates by refugee agencies.
The number of Iraqis resettled in the US as refugees stands at just under 3,500 to date.
In 2007, the US received 17,000 refugee referrals; but only 1,608 made it to US In an effort to speed up the process, the US said it will soon begin interviewing refugees in Iraq.
By contrast Sweden, with a fraction of America’s population and no stake in Iraq, has admitted 31,300 Iraqi refugees since March 2003. When it comes to granting asylum to Iraqis, Sweden leads the way in Europe, followed by the Finns.
Almost 900 Iraqis obtained visas under a special program for translators and interpreters, one of the riskiest jobs in the country. More than 200 Iraqis have been killed for working with the Americans.
Critics of the Bush administration have harsh words for its handling of the refugee crisis triggered by the war in Iraq.
A sampler: lack of leadership, ineptitude, lethargy, abdication of responsibility, moral bankruptcy, neglect.
Those involved in bringing Iraqis to the United States say they are doing the best they can.
Trying to meet a newly-set target of 1,000 a month for the current budget year is a huge increase over last year when resettlements averaged 134 a month.
The new program got off to a lackluster start, according to State Department figures. In October, the first month of fiscal year 2008, the number was 450.
In November, it dropped to 362, and in December to 245.
Does the US have a moral obligation to help because it started the war that uncorked ethnic violence? Yes, say senior State Department officials privately, particularly for those Iraqis who worked with Americans and put their lives at risk.
Critics say President George W. Bush has remained silent on the issue and ignored appeals to show leadership in dealing with the world’s largest displaced population, after Darfur.
“The value of a presidential commitment to resolving this crisis cannot be overstated,” Ken Bacon, the head of the relief organization Refugees International said in a letter to Bush before the president left on his Middle East tour in January.
The letter was co-signed by 20 prominent refugee advocates.
James Foley, the State Department’s senior coordinator for Iraqi refugees, said efforts to welcome 1,000 Iraqis a month “is a tall order but it remains attainable.”
“While we will not cross the thousand arrivals (per month) threshold until some time in the spring, we are confident that we will have substantial numbers of arrivals in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year and thus we continue to aim for 12,000 arrivals by the end of September,” Foley told reporters.
Foley said that immigration interviews and investigations for refugees had been sped up. About 3,300 preliminary application investigations have been handled since October, according to government records.
The government expects to handle 5,500 more between January and March, and up to 8,000 in the March-June period, according to Foley.
But that number is still “shockingly small,” says Melissa Winkler, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the nonprofit organizations tasked with helping resettle Iraqis in the US In addition, Washington has said it would accept annually 500 Iraqis working directly with the US government — translators, interpreters and their families — through a special visa program.
Under legislation recently adopted in Congress, up to 5,000 Iraqis who have worked for the US government and are considered living under serious threat of retribution in Iraq could be accepted for resettlement into the United States each year.
