WASHINGTON – The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said yesterday that it welcomed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's creation of a high-level State Department task force to deal with the Iraqi refugee issue.
State Department officials said the Bush administration will expand the number of refugees it allows into the United States, with special attention given to Iraqis who may be at risk because they worked for the U.S. government.
But the administration would admit only 20,000 Iraqis at most this year. Last year, 202 refugees from Iraq were allowed to resettle in the United States.
Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey told a Senate hearing last month that the United States had admitted 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003. She ascribed the small number to the Department of Homeland Security's stringent security review of each applicant.
One of every seven Iraqis has fled his or her home or sought refuge abroad, the largest movement of people in the Middle East since the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948, according to U.N. officials and relief workers. Every day, violence displaces an estimated 1,300 more Iraqis.
In his just-released budget, President Bush asked for $35 million to help Iraq's refugees in fiscal year 2008, plus $15 million in supplemental funding for this year.
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a private nonprofit group, had urged Bush to seek $250 million as part of a supplemental war funding request.
The committee yesterday welcomed Rice's announcement about the task force, which was made Monday.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimated last month that there are as many as 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, primarily in Syria and Jordan. About 1.7 million people are displaced within Iraq.
