After months of calls for increasing the number of refugee admissions to the U.S. from Iraq, the Bush administration responded several months ago by agreeing to allow 7000 refugees into the country. The figure, illustrated in comparison to the graphic above, was considered a paltry response by human rights organizations and other Middle Eastern countries.
In response to the continued criticism, yesterday the Bush administration announced that it was taking yet more steps to alleviate the refugee crisis in Iraq by designating two senior officials to oversee the refugee process and remove some of the roadblocks that define it. That in itself might have been useful, had one of the senior officials not been James Foley, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti. Haiti, as some may recall, suffered under an extremely restrictive refugee policy that denied entry to thousands who sought to flee the war-torn nation off the U.S. coast. In fact, Haiti’s refugee crisis in the 1990s was then considered one of the more callous decisions made by both the Bush and Clinton administrations, who were happy to engage in the fight over Cuban refugee Elian Gonzales, but remained uninterested in the largely poor and uneducated Haitians trying to escape one of the deadliest, poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
James Foley should have all the experience he needs: faced with a violent situation exacerbated by an exponentially growing humanitarian crisis, he should know just how few Iraqis the U.S. can admit in order to save face.
Image source: New York Times online
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