The U.S. is still moving at a snail's pace in admitting Iraqi refugees:
WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The United States admitted 444 Iraqi refugees in February, according to preliminary figures released by a U.S. official on Saturday, up from 375 in January but below the pace needed to meet its 12,000 annual target...
More than 2 million Iraqis are believed to have fled to neighboring countries such as Syria and Jordan since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein and eventually triggered a brutal insurgency.
In fiscal 2007, the United States admitted 1,608 Iraqi refugees, up from 202 the previous year.
When you posted that map of refugee patterns the other day, someone responded to my snark about where the US fit into the picture by saying that according to the UNHCR we're hosting nearly 20,000 Iraqi refugees. That struck me as high given what I'd read about State Department reluctance to issue visas to Iraqis, and does so even more given the figures you cite above. 1800 in two of the worst yers of the crisis, yet ten times that number overall? Seems impossible.
Posted by: weldon berger | March 03, 2008 at 12:09 AM