http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/1265/2007/01/2-112304-1.htmNumber of people displaced within Iraq? It's a staggering 1.8 miillion. Number of Iraqis who have fled to other countries? Two million and counting. Number of Iraqis who have been granted refugee status in the United States since 2003? A grand total of 466.
Those figures are from the International Herald Tribune. Such indifference to refugees is unforgivable as America has "an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended", it says. The paper notes the United States is planning to spend $20 million on helping Iraqi refugees in 2007. Compare that to eight billion dollars a month spent on waging the war, and you get the picture.
Writing in USA Today, Adam Goodheart of Washington College in Chestertown and political writer John R. Bohrer point out another "laughable" figure when it comes to U.S. help for Iraqi refugees: $500,000 that will go to the U.N. refugee settlement efforts. Doesn't sound too bad until you divide the figure by the millions who have left Iraq and get a figure of a few cents of aid per refugee.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey acknowledges it is difficult for Iraqis to pass U.S. immigration checks since the administratin tightened its system after the attacks on September 11, 2001, according to the Chicago Tribune . But the paper says Iraqis are not even allowed to apply for asylum at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.