Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Today's Iraq Hypocrisy

Is contained in this arcane announcement from the White House. After wading through the bureaucratic jargon, one learns that the absolute most number of Iraqi refugees that the US will admit in this fiscal year (which just began) is 38,000, and that's assuming that the entire Near East/South Asia plus all the unallocated quota goes to Iraqis, which it won't, because Iraqis have so much difficulty getting passports and security clearances.

But the real weasel touch is provided by this bit --

I [George Bush] also specify that, for FY 2008, the following persons may, if otherwise qualified, be considered refugees for the purpose of admission to the United States within their countries of nationality or habitual residence:

a. Persons in Vietnam
b. Persons in Cuba
c. Persons in the former Soviet Union
d. In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location


So for a bit of legacy anti-Communist grandstanding, he's willing to specify that one can be current residents of these countries i.e. not internationally displaced, and still be a refugee. Iraq is not on the list, except implicitly through item (d), which probably won't be used much.

And all this is against the backdrop of 4.2 million Iraqi refugees.

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