A national shame

In the dark days before World War II, thousands of Jews tried to flee Nazi Germany but were refused refuge in the west; many were forced to return to Europe and their doom. In one infamous case, the steamship St. Louis fruitlessly tried to bring nearly a thousand to America in the spring of 1939, but the United States turned them away and sent them back. That same year, the Wagner-Rogers bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children died in Congressional committee, and restrictive immigration quotas prevented tens of thousands from escaping the flames of the Holocaust. America and the rest of the west had turned a blind eye to the developing horror before the war, and was shocked when the magnitude of the Nazis' genocidal crimes were revealed at the end of the war. Never again, it was hoped, would we so callously ignore the deadly peril of others.

Sixty years later, the United States began a needless war which has sent fresh waves of refugees fleeing the hell that their land has become. As Iraqi society has been ripped apart over four and a half years of war and sectarian outrages, civilian casualties have mounted into the tens and then hundreds of thousands and Iraqis have been fleeing their homes in staggering numbers. Every month another 50,000 flee; to date, UNHCR reports, over four million Iraqis, or a seventh of the pre-war population, have fled beyond Iraq's borders or sought shelter in other parts of Iraq.Many Iraqi refugees have fled to neighboring countries. Jordan, a country of just 5.6 million with a gross domestic product of only $14 billion, has become home to 750,000 refugees, at a cost of a billion dollars each year. Syria, a country the Bush administration loves to hate, has taken in about one and a half million, a number over an eighth the size of its own population. Egypt, a key but fragile ally in the Arab world beset by its own domestic instability, is now hosting around 100,000. The refugee crisis is overwhelming these countries. Each month, another 50,000 Iraqis flee their country's dangers; the Iraqi exodus now ranks third in size behind the Palestinian and Sudanese diasporas, and is worsening more rapidly than any other refugee crisis in the world.

Becoming a refugee is an act of desperation. Even when they find refuge in another country, refugees rarely find work. They eat up their savings, they look for charity, they turn to prostitution. Life is hard; poverty and despair haunt their makeshift camps. Nearly half lack ready access to food. But even this is preferable to the hell that this war has created in their own land. For thousands who have worked with Americans in Iraq, fleeing is in the only alternative to brutal reprisals, as insurgents murder and threaten those they consider traitors.

This war was started by the United States on fraudulent pretexts. As has become very evident, the U.S. didn't need to attack Iraq, and has botched the occupation of that unhappy country. Clearly, the United States bears heavy responsibility for the fate of the Iraqi populace, including the multitudes fleeing the violence. The U.S. bears an especially heavy responsibility for those tens of thousands of Iraqis whose fate has been compromised by their association with Americans.

Yet the United States has pledged to admit only 7,000 Iraqi refugees. For those with math anxiety, I'll restate that number: for every 357 refugees Syria, Jordan and Egypt has taken in, the U.S. says it will accept one. Incredibly, the reality is even worse; by early 2007, the U.S. had let only 466 into the country, or just one for every 5,300 already taking refuge in those three countries. Even Sweden, a country not even remotely connected to the war, has accepted forty times as many as the U.S.

This is a national disgrace. Americans should be ashamed. The United States must permit far more of the Iraqis we have endangered to enter this country, and the U.S. must help those other countries sheltering refugees to shoulder the burden of caring for them. Yes, it will be expensive, but there is no moral alternative. We have needlessly brought death and destruction to Iraq, and it is our duty to now do what we can to succor its victims. We closed our eyes and our hearts in 1939; let us not repeat that crime in 2007.

Postscript: The New York Times ran a good article on this topic on August 10, 2007.

Postscript: Despite the misleading rhetoric from the administration, this issue isn't going away, and the situation continues to fester. See a pretty good column and update from Roger Cohen of the September 27, 2007 edition of the New York Times.

Note: this was originally posted in ketches, yaks & hawks on 27 July 2007