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Crisis Looms for Iraqi Refugees: Amnesty •
US Wrestles With Iraq Refugee Issue
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 16 April 2007
As the number of Iraqi refugees continues to grow exponentially, the American
president who earned a reputation as a bumbler who couldn't walk and chew gum
at the same time is increasingly being hailed as the hero who dealt effectively
with a similar crisis forty years ago.
The president was Gerald R. Ford, and the similar crisis was in Vietnam. On
the evening of April 10, 1975 President Ford appealed to a joint session of
Congress to act to ensure the safety of "tens of thousands of South Vietnamese
employees of the United States government, of news agencies, of contractors
and businesses for many years, whose lives, with their dependents, are in very
grave peril. There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals,
professors, teachers, editors and opinion leaders who have supported the South
Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States to whom we have a profound
moral obligation."
Only a month later, Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance
Act. As a result, more than 131,000 Vietnamese refugees were rescued from the
chaos of South Vietnam and brought to the security of the US.
Today, the refugee crises are largely in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan.
Thus far, more than two million Iraqi refugees have fled from persecution and
sectarian violence. They have mostly traveled to Jordan and Syria. In addition,
at least 1.8 million are displaced within Iraq.
According to Human Rights First, tens of thousands of these refugees have been
targeted because of their work for the US government, non-governmental organizations
or the media. Iraqis who have served as translators for the US forces, for example,
have frequently been attacked and threatened.
Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch and author of an
extensive report on the situation, says, "As it turns out, many of the
people who are fleeing are fleeing because of their associations with the United
States."
The chances are President Ford would not have been proud of the US response
to the current refugee crisis. At a January 2007 oversight hearing on "The
Plight of Iraqi Refugees," Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) expressed
concern that the US admitted only 202 Iraqi refugees to the country during fiscal
2006 and that a special immigrant visa program for Iraqi and Afghan translators
already had a six-year wait list. Since April 2003, the Bush administration
has admitted exactly 692 Iraqi refugees, and the number of those in need is
growing by an estimated 50,000 a month.
In February 2007, under considerable pressure from Congress and the media,
the State Department announced that the US would admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees
through its resettlement program; create special programs to assist Iraqis who
are at risk because of their employment or close association with the United
States government, and contribute $18 million to the work of the UN High Commission
for Refugees. But at the same time, the Bush administration admitted that it
probably would not be able to move more than two or three thousand Iraqis by
the end of September, a period of eight months.
What accounts for this admittedly constipated performance? In 1975, President
Ford confronted a public weary of an unpopular, unsuccessful war, but got Congress
to deliver anyway. Today, President Bush faces similar sentiments regarding
the five-year-plus US intervention in Iraq.
The difference, according to national security, human rights and governmental
sources, is 9/11. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the establishment
of the Department of Homeland Security, Americans have lived in an environment
of fear. At the top of their fear list are Middle Eastern immigrants, who are
seen as potential terrorists.
As a consequence of 9/11, the DHS established rigorous criteria for granting
asylum to those from all other countries - and these criteria apply to people
who have become refugees because of the American invasion of their country.
The DHS, however, lacked and still lacks the resources to carry out its mandated
security checks on would-be asylum-seekers. Each Iraqi must be interviewed individually,
including translators, truck drivers and others who have worked for the US military,
which presumably carried out its own security checks before they were hired.
Because of security concerns, they cannot be interviewed at the American Embassy
in Baghdad. If they have fled to Jordan, Syria, or other countries in the region,
they must be interviewed there. This means dispatching DHS or State Department
screeners overseas, where few wish to go. And before interviews can take place,
applicants must be referred to American authorities by the UN. That process
calls for resources the UN doesn't have, and predictably involves a mountain
of bureaucratic paperwork.
For example, last year Congress passed legislation to offer special immigrant
status to persons serving as translators with the US Armed Forces. Under this
statute, a limited number of translators and their immediate family may immigrate
to the United States in each fiscal year.
But applicants are required to jump through multiple bureaucratic hoops to
qualify. They must be able to prove they have worked directly with the US Armed
Forces as a translator for at least twelve months; obtain a favorable written
recommendation from a general or flag officer in the chain of command of the
US Armed Forces unit that was supported by the translator; cleared a background
check and screening as determined by a general or flag officer; is otherwise
eligible to receive an immigrant visa, and is otherwise admissible to the US
for permanent residence.
Spouses and children of the translator may be able to follow or join after
the translator has been issued an immigrant visa.
The bill specifies that the US Armed Forces unit is the "advocate"
on behalf the translator and his/her immediate family. The translator must file
the petition and related documents directly with the US Citizenship and Immigration
Service (USCIS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
There are clearly problems with this legislation. For one thing, people who
have fled their country in fear of their lives frequently have no access to
the extensive documentation required by this law. Nor, if they have already
left Iraq for another country, do they have access to the generals or flag officers
of the units they worked for.
But the most consequential provision of the legislation is its limited scope.
The total number of Iraqi and Afghani translators who may be provided special
immigrant translator status during each fiscal year cannot exceed 50. The Department
of Homeland Security's Nebraska Service Center is mandated to track this numerical
cap. As of January, this cap was exceeded by more than 6,000 applicants.
This situation has produced major heartburn for Ellen R. Sauerbrey, assistant
secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, who has been grilled
by both House and Senate oversight committees. Many members of these bodies
strongly opposed her nomination to her current post, based on lack of experience.
Ms. Sauerbrey was a recess appointment in January 2006. She is a two-time failed
gubernatorial candidate in Maryland and previously served as US envoy on women's
issues to the United Nations, where she opposed ratification of the Convention
for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Sauerbrey has also worked as a Republican National Committeewoman, and is former
Minority Leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. She was a Republican member
of the House of Delegates from 1978 to 1994 and was candidate for governor in
1994 and 1998.
A former public school teacher, Sauerbrey has no prior experience dealing with
refugee populations. She also has no experience dealing with human disasters.
Given that a large percentage of refugees tend to be women and children, Sauerbrey's
stance on reproductive rights is relevant. According to Planned Parenthood,
she is anti-abortion and believes that it is not a legitimate element of reproductive
health assistance. She also approves withholding funding to the United Nations
Population Fund and has denied that adolescents have any right to exercise autonomous
control over their reproductive health.
With Democrats now in control of both the House and the Senate, Sauerbrey and
the Bush administration's policies on Iraqi and Afghan refugees find themselves
subjected to robust oversight for the first time. But even if Congress is able
to bring about positive policy changes and adopt regulations to streamline refugee
processing, it remains unclear whether the State Department and the Department
of Homeland Security have the resources and the professional know-how to implement
the changes efficiently.
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.
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Crisis Looms for Iraqi Refugees: Amnesty
By Stephanie Nebehay
Reuters
Sunday 15 April 2007
A new humanitarian crisis looms in the Middle East unless Western powers take
urgent measures to assist four million Iraqis uprooted by conflict, Amnesty
International warned on Monday.
The London-based human rights group called on the United States, the European
Union and others to help Jordan and Syria, whose governments are struggling
to care for some two million Iraqi refugees who have fled their homeland.
Another 1.9 million are displaced within Iraq, many in the past year marked
by suicide bombings and sectarian violence.
The appeal came ahead of a two-day international conference in Geneva, opening
on Tuesday, called by the United Nations refugee agency to confront massive
needs in the region.
"The Middle East is on the verge of a new humanitarian crisis unless the
European Union, U.S. and other states take urgent and concrete measures,"
Amnesty said in a statement.
Malcolm Smart, head of Amnesty International's Middle East and North African
Programme, said Syria and Jordan had borne the brunt of the refugee exodus so
far, "but there must be a limit."
"It is vital that other governments now step in and deliver ... direct
assistance to ensure that the refugees are adequately housed and fed, and have
access to health care and education in Syria, Jordan and the other (host) countries,"
he said.
From 40,000 to 50,000 Iraqis flee their homes each month in an exodus linked
to pervasive violence, poor basic services, a loss of jobs, and an uncertain
future, according to the UNHCR.
Increasingly Desperate
More than 3,000 U.S. forces and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been
killed since Washington led an invasion of the country in March 2003 that ousted
dictator Saddam Hussein.
Sectarian tensions between majority Shi'ites and long dominant Sunni Arabs
erupted after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006, adding
to widespread insurgency violence and prompting many to leave their homes.
"Those who have fled are becoming increasingly desperate as they and their
host communities run out of resources," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told
reporters before the Geneva meeting.
"We hope to hear commitments on all of these aspects next week because
the international community needs to focus collectively on a whole range of
humanitarian needs," he said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator John
Holmes, U.S. Under-Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky and senior European officials
are among 450 officials due to attend.
Although the gathering is not a donor conference, U.N. officials hope that
it will put pressure on Western states to provide more financial help and take
more Iraqi asylum-seekers.
Amnesty urged the United States and EU member states to set up "generous
settlement programs" to take in the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, often
in need of costly medical care.
"Such resettlement programs should go far beyond token numbers and should
constitute a significant part of the solution to the current crisis," it
said.
Several thousand Iraqi refugees were accepted by so-called third countries
last year, according to UNHCR, which hopes to find 20,000 resettlement places
this year.
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