7,000 Iraqi Refugees To Be Permitted Into U.S.

FOX ^ | 02/14/07 | Unknown

[Froufrou]

The Bush administration is planning to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the country over the next year, compared with 463 Iraqis who have been allowed to enter the U.S. since the war began, the State Department is announcing.

The United States has been working with international organizations to aid Iraqi refugees who have been resettling in neighboring countries of Jordan and Syria. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is asking for $60 million in aid from nations around the world. The U.S. will pledge $18 million in new funding.

Thousands of translators, aides to Americans and others fleeing religious persecution and violent reprisal have been seeking escape from Iraq since the sectarian violence picked up a year ago.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new task force to coordinate assistance for refugee assistance to be spearheaded by Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky.

In fiscal year 2005, the United States made available 70,000 slots for refugees worldwide; 53,000 of those slots were filled, but only 202 Iraqis were allowed into the United States. Another 50 Iraqis and Afghans were admitted through a limited Pentagon program for translators who have worked with U.S military.

[mborman]

We're working hard to bring democracy to Iraq. Why import them to the United States? Makes utterly no sense at all.

[lqclamar]

They're calling for 7,000 Iraqi refugees, and 70,000 refugees in total. This is tiny compared to the size of the American population.

It seems like a tiny number, but these types of refugee policies are often nothing but trouble. The state department has a history of intentionally planting them in towns that they deem to be insufficiently "diverse."

When a community of 10,000 farmers in rural Kansas becomes a community of 10,000 farmers plus 7,000 muslim refugees, things are prone to get real tense real quick.

And quite frankly, who could blame them? It's not as if the non-refugees had lived for decades along side a historical and growing local muslim community that has assimilated already and will assist in the assimilation of new muslim arrivals. Instead it's the government coming in and telling them that they have to become "multi-cultural" by the next year and dumping a mosque in the center of their town.

[lqclamar]

What if your community took in half of them, like that town in Ohio that ended up with 30,0000 Somalis who are now telling the original inhabitants how to live?

Case in point. When the government does these refugee programs it almost always ends up imposing severe costs onto unwilling neighbors in the proximity of where they decide to settle them.

A couple thousand new residents aren't going to sway many national elections, but those residents (and their anchor children and grandchildren) can completely alter the political policies and makeup of a local government in a rural community. Dump a bunch of muslim refugees in a sleepy conservative farm town deemed "insufficiently diverse" by the DoS, and next thing you know there's a guy running for the town council or county commission on a platform of Shari'a law.

[lqclamar]

Every American has an ancestor who was an immigrant

Big difference. Most of our ancestors paid their way here, settled on their own, and assimilated into the existing culture. When the government does these refugee programs the taxpayers end up footing the bill and the Feds dump them en masse into the backyard of an unwilling local community.

[zimdog]

You forgot syria