Iraq: A Displacement Crisis

[Jedburgh]

There is also an impact here at home:

El Paso Times, 22 Aug 07: More Iraqis Cross Southwest Border Seeking Asylum

The number of Iraqis seeking asylum as they enter the United States over the nation's Southwest border has nearly tripled this year compared with last, and the year isn't even over, said Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a member of the president's Cabinet who oversees the nation's 16 intelligence agencies....

[tequila]

Part of the illegal flow is likely due to the atrociously low number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S. --- even for those who have assisted the occupation, as Amb. Crocker has highlighted. Even Sweden has taken more.

... But State and DHS are unlikely to admit more than 2,000 Iraqi refugees by October, U.S. officials said. Since 2003, the year of the U.S. invasion, the United States has admitted 825 Iraqi refugees, many of them backlogged applicants from the time when Saddam Hussein was in power. By comparison, the United States has accepted 3,498 Iranians in the past nine months ...

[Merv Benson]

I think most of them are Christians fleeing persecution by the terrorist in Iraq. The San Antonio Express News has done a series of articles on the Iraqis coming across the southern border. I will try to find the link and post it.

[Cavguy]

Part of the illegal flow is likely due to the atrociously low number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S. --- even for those who have assisted the occupation, as Amb. Crocker has highlighted. Even Sweden has taken more.

I'm working to get a translator visa for my OIF 1 terp. He (a young sunni teacher of Comp Sci) was threated and expelled from his SE Baghdad neighborhood by Mehidi Army in 2006, fled to UAE where he has been working as a programmer. He's about to lose that visa and has nowhere to go - his family (who he is supporting financially) is displaced in Syria.

He did a lot for us, and I feel obligated to help him. Unfortunately, the translator visa program is very bureaucratic and cumbersome.

[Ken White]

This:

"But State and DHS are unlikely to admit more than 2,000 Iraqi refugees by October, U.S. officials said. Since 2003, the year of the U.S. invasion, the United States has admitted 825 Iraqi refugees, many of them backlogged applicants from the time when Saddam Hussein was in power. By comparison, the United States has accepted 3,498 Iranians in the past nine months."

Proves that DoD is not the only bureaucracy still fighting the last war. Sad. Hopefully we'll get it fixed before it's too late.

Hope you get your terp accepted...

[skiguy]

Christians fleeing Iraq.
Mosul Christians find faith tested

Minority religions under attack in Iraq

Although I totally lack any experience or education, as a Christian this is something I am very much paying attention to...and not just the Christians. This whole humantarian crisis is disturbing, to say the least.

If anyone works at a interfaith-based NGO, please remember my name. After I get my degree, those will be the first places I will be applying for a job.

[tequila]

George Packer of the NEW YORKER on Iraqi translators.

[skiguy]

U.S. commission hears testimony on Christians in Iraq

More than 1.5 million refugees have fled religious persecution in Iraq since 2003, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Although Christians account for only 3 percent of the total Iraqi population, they make up 40 percent of the refugees now living in nearby countries, including Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iran. Another 2 million people, many living in the northern Nineveh plain, are internally displaced.

Another witness, Pascale Warda, former minister of migration and displacement in Iraq and a Chaldean-Assyrian Catholic, delivered her statement through an interpreter. She said Christians in Iraq are targeted by violence because "they are identified as American allies and infidels, for the simple reason that they share a common faith with those in the Western world.