Revisiting U.S. Policy On Iraqi Refugees

By Paul Leonard and Aliyah Shahid
        
More than a month after the U.S. State Department pledged to resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the United States by September, refugee advocates have begun to reassess a policy initially welcomed with guarded approval.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago, the U.S. government has given safe haven to just 466 Iraqi refugees. By comparison, the Bush administration’s February 14 pledge to resettle another 7,000 this year appears generous.

But according to Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch, 7,000 is “a tiny number.”

Tim Irwin, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), agrees. “With two million refugees outside Iraq, any figure is going to look like a drop in the bucket,” he said.

In all, UNHCR estimates that 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes because of street bombings, kidnappings, and sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Nearly half of those are displaced within Iraq; the rest have sought safe haven in neighboring countries, particularly Syria and Jordan.

Some of those refugees are expected to be among the 7,000 allowed into the United States. Although the UNHCR has already identified them, the first refugees will not arrive in the U.S. for six to nine months.

“Under the best of circumstances, half of the number that we actually are addressing…will be travel-ready before the end of September,” said Ellen Sauerbrey, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, on the same day the Bush administration announced its plan.

For some of the displaced at points of entry in Jordan, Syria and Turkey, the process of resettlement “could take years,” according to UNHCR’s Irwin.

Refugee advocates say that delays are due in part to an inefficient refugee processing system, which is designed to process hundreds, but not thousands, of applicants.

“Basically, the pipeline has gotten very rusty, since it hasn’t been used since 2001,” said Frelick. After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government temporarily suspended resettlement for all refugees. The program gradually reopened, but Iraqis were the last group reinstated into the U.S. resettlement program, in April 2005, said Frelick.

Another cause for delay is the intense security screening process put in place for would-be refugees after the September 11 attacks.

Names of all candidates for refugee status are run through the State Department’s Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), a database that has almost doubled in size since September 11. Interviews of applicants are then conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains its own Terrorist Screening Database.

With these extensive screening measures in place, no known terrorist has entered the U.S. through the refugee resettlement program, according to Parastou Hassouri, a human rights lawyer who works for Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance. However, refugee experts say that increased security checks do mean longer delays for those fleeing Iraq’s violence.

“Though it is supposed to take 45 days, historically the checks have taken longer than that,” said Frelick.

Refugee advocates say another reason for delays was the Bush administration’s failure to fund its new Iraqi resettlement policy. When the pledge was announced in February, the administration said it hoped to receive financing for it at a United Nations donor conference in Geneva. That conference is not scheduled to convene until April.

Meanwhile, some of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens remain in danger, waiting for a chance at a new, more secure life.

Among them are Iraqis who have worked for the United States as translators, who are frequently targeted by insurgents for their association with the U.S. government.  Laura Capps, a spokesperson for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), said that a special immigrant translator visa program, created for Iraqis and Afghans working for the U.S. military, has experienced a backlog in applicants. Thus, none of the 50 Iraqi translators eligible for resettlement in the U.S. this year will be here by September.

In past conflicts, the U.S. has been relatively welcoming of refugees made vulnerable by their association with America.

When the South Vietnamese government collapsed in 1975, the United States accepted 130,000 South Vietnamese in the first nine months, including 65,000 who feared for their lives because of their collaboration with Americans. In total, 1.4 million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians were admitted to the U.S. after the Vietnam conflict, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Some refugee advocates say the U.S. has a moral obligation to help its employees in Iraq whose lives are threatened. They also worry about the huge refugee populations in Syria and Jordan, where the Iraqis put a burden on local resources. Refugee officials say the U.S. needs to increase assistance to Middle Eastern countries to help them cope.

“The vast majority [of the Iraqis] won’t be resettled and are still in need of protection,” said Kristele Younes, an advocate for Refugees International.

UNHCR has the capacity to resettle 20,000 Iraqis permanently in countries around the world. In January, the organization appealed for $60 million in emergency aid. The United States has agreed to give $18 million, which policy analysts say is not enough.

“Given this war is the U.S. war against Iraq, the responsibility lies within the U.S.,” said Roberta Cohen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “The U.S. shouldn’t just give a third of the money. They really should give most of it.”

With additional reporting by Tina Shah.