Fleeing Our Responsibility-The U.S. Owes Succor to Iraqi Refugees

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062201716.html

Fleeing Our Responsibility
The U.S. Owes Succor to Iraqi Refugees

By Julia Taft
Sunday, June 24, 2007; Page B07

Last month an Iraqi couple working for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad were kidnapped and executed. Their deaths were not acknowledged by the State Department, and the media made little mention of the murders. They are among the most recent of thousands of cases in which Iraqis affiliated with the United States have been forced into hiding, tortured or, often, killed.

I found myself thinking of this husband and wife last week, as World Refugee Day passed, and struggling with a terrible contradiction. The United States is the world's most generous contributor to refugee relief, and we have always taken the lead on resettling refugees. Yet our country has done the bare minimum to help these Iraqis facing death and exile. Instead of clearing the way for their resettlement, we have blocked their path to safety with bureaucratic barriers and political hurdles.

President Bush should look to another Republican president, Gerald Ford, as an example of executive leadership in addressing refugee crises. In 1975 President Ford asked me to direct an interagency task force charged with resettling Indochinese refugees in the United States. Between May 1 and Dec. 20, 1975, we evacuated and resettled more than 131,000 Vietnamese who were at risk of persecution.

We rescued these people in the face of fierce political opposition. Initially, for example, California Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he wanted no refugees in his state. We overcame his reluctance and all other obstacles because the president had committed to doing everything possible to save the lives of the Vietnamese who had stood beside us. Ford persuaded Republicans and Democrats in Congress to appropriate emergency funds, and he visited refugees awaiting resettlement at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. American families, churches and synagogues responded to the president's leadership with offers to sponsor refugees in need. At staging grounds in the South Pacific, our immigration officers worked 14-hour days.

Why is there no similar sense of urgency for the 4.2 million Iraqis displaced and in danger? President Bush himself has yet to speak of the crisis. Although members of his administration claim to have made Iraqi refugees a top priority, admission numbers tell a different story. Only one Iraqi refugee made it through our process to safety in the United States in May, and only one made it the month before. The United States has committed to reviewing 7,000 cases and admitting 3,000 refugees by the end of this fiscal year, in September. That is as many as our team processed in a single day back in 1975.

What has happened to our leadership on this issue?

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[HereSince1628]

1. Leaving them is better than Cheney's idea of putting them on boats

and sinking them mid-Atlantic.