Blogging About Iraq’s Refugees
Feb 1st, 2007 at 2:17 pm by PSoTD
Iraq is in the throes of the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948, a mass flight out of and within the country that is ravaging basic services and commerce, swamping neighboring nations with nearly 2 million refugees and building intense pressure for emigration to Europe and the United States, according to the United Nations and refugee experts.
How much are we spending on the problem? Is America really only spending 14 cents per refugee?
How does that compare to the past?
Throughout the 1990s, while Saddam Hussein was tyrannizing his countrymen, the United States admitted nearly 5,000 Iraqi refugees each year. Yet today — more than three years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq — the numbers have plummeted. In 2004, the United States welcomed only 66 Iraqi refugees. Since then, we’ve admitted just 400.
Bush has the legal authority to immediately admit 20,000 additional refugees, regardless of quotas. Why won’t he?
