Asylum: Let's get this done...

via Upyernoz, whose friend writes an article in today's LA Times that gives us something think about over the weekend:

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 1.6 million people have fled Iraq since the invasion, and recent estimates show their numbers increasing by about 100,000 each month. More than 1.5 million Iraqis have been displaced by violence within their country, a number growing at the staggering rate of 50,000 per month.

President Bush and Congress bear a moral responsibility to those Iraqis whose lives are imperiled because of their willingness to help us. We need to move swiftly to expand the special immigrant status beyond the military translators to permit these Iraqis asylum in our country. The U.S. Embassy should be equipped to issue such visas to Iraqis who already have obtained security clearances to work for our government. I am not advocating absorbing every Iraqi displaced by violence, but rather, offering a life preserver to Iraqis who believed in the U.S. enough to help us when we needed them most. Let us not lengthen the shadow cast by our abandonment of those Iraqis who rebelled against tyranny in 1991 and 1996.

Beyond any moral considerations, there is a strategic imperative. Behind Afghanistan, Iraq is the greatest producer of refugees in the world. Though most head to Syria or Jordan, the latter of which has begun deporting Iraqi refugees, the entire region is warily eyeing the influx of the needy. Where large numbers of refugees go, instability has a nasty tendency to follow. Protests broke out in Cairo this month when Iraqis demanded that their children be allowed to attend Egyptian schools.

Meanwhile, the budget for the UNHCR's Iraq program — which could help ease the strain on governments in the region — was halved for the coming year. Its current budget of $29 million is only 60% funded. (By comparison, the U.S. military spends more than $29 million in Iraq every three hours.) The president needs to lead the international donor community by dramatically increasing our financial support to the UNHCR's program for the coming year, enabling it to properly identify and assist refugees. Our policy of indifference will further strain our relations with Iraq's neighbors, who are already apprehensive about the swelling ranks of unemployed and hopeless Iraqis.

Read the whole thing. Those who have helped us--possibly at the expense of endagering their own lives--deserve all of our gratitude and help once they are in need. Let's get this done. Soon.