As I wrote earlier there is a huge Iraqi refugee problem. The List Project has more details and points out that other countries are taking in the burden that the US is sloughing off. Read more at Juan Cole’s blog
The State Department has pledged to help bring some Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. government to the United States. But these efforts are mired in a bureaucratic system so slow it cannot keep up with itself. The number of refugees that the U.S. has promised to bring in is far, far fewer than those who actually make it to our shores.
It is nothing less than tragic that in the last fiscal year, Sweden has taken in almost ten times as many Iraqi refugees as the United States. Indeed many nations are carrying a burden which they in all honestly cannot afford to carry. An example is Jordan, where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees reside. Mounting prices are taxing the economy and its people, and refugees are having the hardest time of it. Until Iraq becomes stable enough to allow those Iraqis that helped the U.S. return to livable and sustainable conditions, the State Department, and the U.S. government have an obligation and a duty to give them safe haven and asylum within the United States, as well as to look after their wellbeing.
