By NNN-KUNA
Washington : Top US officials in charge of Iraqi refugee resettlement said this week the US is prepared to admit 12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, but cautioned the final number may fall short of the goal.
According to the latest government statistics 1,432 Iraqi refugees have been resettled in the US since October, including 375 in January.
The government officials said it expects to handle 5,500 more between January and March, and up to an additional 8,000 between March and June. “This is a tall order but it remains attainable,” said Ambassador James Foley, the senior coordinator on Iraqi refugee issues, at a briefing at the State Department adding “this is not a guarantee by any means.”
However, the number is not expected to average more than 1,000 refugees per month until the spring, although about 1,321 per month would be necessary to reach the 12,000 mark by late September deadline.
“While we will not cross the 1,000 arrivals per month threshold until sometime in the spring, we are confident that we will have substantial arrivals in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year and thus aim for the 12,000 by the end of September,” said Foley.
The US has come under fire in the international community for admitting relatively few numbers of Iraqi refugees, less than 3,100, in comparison to neighbouring countries like Syria, with 1.5 million, Jordan with up to 750,000, and European countries like Germany and Britain which admitted 36,000 and 22, 000 respectively, according to the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, the organisation in charge of referring refugees for asylum.
Last year, the Bush administration admitted a total of 1,608, falling slightly short of its end-year goal of admitting 1,800 Iraqis to the US, though the exact number the US proposed to admit for 2007 was contentious.
In January last year, Deputy Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey set the number up to 20,000 but that number was soon revised to 7,000 and finally revised again to less than 2,000.
Foley said last year’s volume was a result of what he described as an ongoing process of “capacity building” in the region. This included the setting up of processing facilities in Jordan and in Syria where most Iraqi refugees have fled.
“It is simply not an overnight process and it continues to the present,” he said, but added as a result the amount of time to conduct interviews and issue visas has been cut down significantly. “The fact of the matter is that the arrival of refugees into the United States is the last step of a long process involving multiple actors,” said Foley, referring to the UNHCR, the International Organisation for Migration and regional governments.
While seated next to the Lori Scialabba, his counterpart at the Department of Homeland Security, Foley denied rumours of “bureaucratic infighting” between the two agencies as a reason for the trickling numbers of Iraqis admitted into the US, but cited US restrictions in Syria and difficulties in processing refugees in Iraq as factors.
He acknowledged “the needs are large and growing” but said “this is not a number issue, in our view we have an obligation to meet humanitarian needs of this population.”
According to the UNHCR, an estimated 2.5 million Iraqi refugees are living outside Iraq while another 2.2 million are displaced inside Iraq, making them the leading nationality seeking asylum in industrialised countries.
Last week, President George W. Bush signed new legislation that allowed for further in-country processing, and allowed for more special immigrant visas, up to 500 for Iraqis working for the US government. It also allows 5,000 visas to be issued to Iraqis facing fear of persecution, including racial, religious, nationality, social, or political persecution.