Leaving Iraq's refugees in the lurch

I've never been a self-hating American expatriate, although I've met a number of them in this part of the world. I don't buy that my country is responsible for most, or even many, of the world's ills, and I'm filled with pride every Fourth of July and optimism every fourth November. But I know that my country, like any other, has gotten some things wrong. And when one of these wrongs, the coldness the United States has shown Iraqi refugees, surfaces for discussion, I become visibly upset and deeply ashamed. My country's claim of liberating Iraq means nothing without the liberation of those the campaign violently expelled from their country. The basic math is that around 2.2 million Iraqi refugees have been forced from their country since 2003, according to the United Nations, and the United States has admitted just over 16,000, according to a Baltimore Sun report in December. This is about seven admitted refugees per 1,000. The majority of the remaining 2 million-plus refugees are scraping by in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where the savings of many have been exhausted and unreplenished, since many can't find legal employment in these countries. These numbers shame me to the core. Sweden has welcomed thousands more Iraqi refugees than we have. Think we can't absorb many more displaced Iraqis? According to Department of Homeland Security statistics, in 2007 alone the United States granted legal permanent residence status to 27,510 individuals from Vietnam, 41,593 from Russia, 70,924 from China, 25,441 from Cuba and nearly 900,000 more from over 180 countries. I don't naively believe that we can admit anywhere close to 2 million Iraqi refugees, but based on these numbers, arguing we are doing all we can is indefensible. Why the holdup on doing the right thing? Each year the U.S. officials conduct a relatively small number of costly and clogged interviews with Iraqi refugees hoping to move to the United States. While the number of annual interviews granted has recently increased, as has the number of refugees we pledge to admit each year, the numbers remain embarrassing. If, as promised, the United States admits 17,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal year 2008-2009, the figure will be close to the number of Guatemalans to whom we give resident status every year. Many Iraqi refugees wait for years in other countries to find out if the American dream is in fact just a dream. One such refugee is a young Iraqi woman whom I met in the quaint neighborhood of Jebel Amman. To protect her relatives' safety, she asked me not to use her name. In 1993, at age 7, residual unrest from the first Persian Gulf war forced her from Iraq to Jordan, where for nearly 16 years her relatives have been trying to get her to America. Year after year, America said no. Finally, after another war has ravaged her native country, the U.N. has told her she will be relocated somewhere in Michigan. When, though, she does not know. "Maybe after another year," she told me. This woman is among the luckier Iraqi refugees, for even though she's had to wait the better part of two decades for an American invitation, she's gotten her clearance and has most of her life in front of her. In Jordan, though, she will leave behind hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees praying for similar fortune. While traveling in the Arab world, I hear many exaggerated claims about the evils of my government's foreign policies, and I sometimes chuckle at the crises blamed on the United States. I was once told by a Cairo cab driver that global warming would cease if only the United States would sign the Kyoto treaty -- this he told me as our vehicle contributed to and cut through some of the most polluted air on Earth. But sometimes the criticism of my country is incisive and painful. When Arabs castigate us for doing little for millions of refugees violently forced from Iraq, I must acknowledge that they are right. I nod in humility. I also reach for my pen, though, for citizens can still love and admire their nation with which they take issue, and that may make them even more determined to help their country inch back toward its better path. Just off our better path stand hundreds of thousands of exhausted refugees from Iraq, dusty and desperate and waiting for the liberation they were promised.