Can’t We accept more than 7,000 refugees?
Posted by Pat McGovern on February 15, 2007 @ 10:59 am
There was discussion in several quarters yesterday regarding a story in the New York Times about the United States agreeing to accept more refugees from Iraq. A similar story appeared on AP. According to the article, we have accepted, thus far, only 466 refugees. That is not a typo; The United State of America, the country which invaded Iraq and had a hand in creating the current chaos there, has only accepted 466 refugees from Iraq. That is not last year, that number is since the invasion. Yeah, the one in 2003.
Apparently, we are now going to be magnanimous enough to settle several thousand. Perhaps as many as 7,000. Isn’t that nice? In order to accomplish this the UN is hoping to register between 135,000 and 200,000 refugees that have fled to Syria and Jordan since the start of the war to determine whether the qualify for refugee status.
Can you imagine how we would be reacting to several hundred thousand refugees of a war-torn country streaming into our country unexpectedly? And we are just a little bigger that Syria and Jordan….put together. I am amazed our relations with Jordan remain as cordial as they are and am equally amazed that our relations with Syria aren’t worse given these circumstances.
Hey! How about China invades Canada and we have to deal with half a million Canadian refugees in Minnesota, Michigan and Vermont! Even if we hated Canada, I think that might make us a bit unhappy with China.
We started this, let’s start taking responsibility for the consequences. Maybe it will teach us not to act as precipitously in the future. That would be a novel idea.
