Fresh Loaf

Another mission accomplished.

The Washington Post reports today that the Bush Administration still isn’t helping the estimated 25,000 Iraqis who risked their lives to help the U.S. invasion and occupation force.

The State Department cannot resettle in the United States about 25,000 Iraqi interpreters and other refugees who worked for the U.S.-led coalition over the next two years because of limits on the number of applications that can be reviewed, according to Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte.

In February, CL published the story of Ahmad Ali, a Sunni Arab Iraqi translator targeted by Shi’ite death squads. Ali escaped Iraq’s sectarian killing fields to start a new life in Doraville.

In the story, I noted that the U.S. accepted just 1,608 Iraqi refugees last year. Sweden, which is 1/33 the size of the United States, has managed to give refuge to more than 31,000 Iraqis since the U.S. invasion.

(Illustration by Jeremy Fuerst)

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This week’s CL cover story is about Ahmad Ali, an Iraqi man now living as a refugee in metro Atlanta. Ali fled his crumbling nation’s violence in 2006. After living in Syria for 15 months, he was granted refugee status by the U.S. government. He and his family moved to Doraville in 2007.

A refugee is not a migrant. Migrants leave their country of origin voluntarily in search of economic opportunity, political freedom, education, adventure, or any combination of those reasons.

A refugee is someone fleeing mortal danger — war, persecution, natural disaster, etc. One hundred forty-seven nations are party to UN-sanctioned agreements about the treatment of refugees. During the last half century, the United Nations has helped 50 million refugees rebuild their lives.

Among the responsibilities that many nations have taken on is the promise to accept refugees each year as legal residents. The United States took in about 70,000 refugees in 2007. Refugees have social security numbers and are allowed to work.

Since the 1990s, metro Atlanta has become home to about 50,000 refugees from around the world. They come from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Burma and Iraq, to name just a few.

(more…)

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