US pressed to admit more Iraqi refugees

WASHINGTON -- The Iraq war has caused nearly 2 million Iraqis to flee their homeland but the United States has admitted only 466 refugees since the conflict began in 2003, leaving behind many Iraqis who worked for the US military and face constant death threats because of it, according to testimony yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Iraqis who worked for US forces during the war as guides and translators told senators yesterday that many of their colleagues have been killed and others have been singled out by insurgents because the military depends on their help. The widow of a slain American journalist also said she has been stymied in her efforts to bring her husband's translator to the United States.

The Iraqis testified behind screens to protect their identity. One Iraqi, identified as a Catholic who helped the military, said Muslim insurgents are "making Christianity virtually extinct in my country" by terrorizing or killing Christians like him. Another Iraqi told senators that those who help US forces are considered "traitors and infidels," and that insurgents relish the chance to kill them.

While yesterday's hearing focused on the plight of Iraqis who helped US troops, it served to highlight the broader issue of the 2 million refugees who have fled their homeland and the estimated 1.7 million Iraqis who are displaced within their country. Humanitarian groups have said the United States has a moral duty to admit more Iraqi refugees because the US invasion preceded the crisis. In the years after the Vietnam War, the United States admitted 900,000 Vietnamese refugees.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who convened the hearing, said there is a six-year waiting list for the slain journalist's translator. He said the United States has "a special obligation to keep faith with the Iraqis who have bravely worked for us, and have often paid a terrible price for it, by providing them with safe refuge" in the United States. Kennedy, who opposes President Bush's effort to increase troops levels in Iraq, said the administration is spending $8 billion a month on the war, but has budgeted only $20 million this year to help the estimated 2 million Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, Syria, and other countries.

But Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, urged support for Bush's plan to increase troops in hopes that it would stabilize Iraq and enable refugees to return. He criticized Democrats, who he said have protested the president's plan but offered no solution to end the conflict.

"We must resist taking action that worsens the refugee plight," Cornyn said.

At the hearing yesterday, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs, used her testimony to call on Iraqi refugees to declare their interest in resettlement. She said they would receive "full and expedited" consideration to enter the United States. But she acknowledged that only 466 Iraqis have been granted refugee status in the United States since the war began , partly due to security concerns about terrorism.

Speaking outside the hearing room, Sauerbrey said the government could take in as many as 20,500 Iraqi refugees this year if funding is available. She said the highest priority would be given to translators and others who have assisted the US military.

Humanitarian groups, however, said there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who want to come to America -- including more than 100,000 Iraqi Christian refugees who have fled their country and want to join relatives in the United States.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that the refugee crisis has exploded and called on the White House to increase settlement of Iraqis in the United States.

The administration "has barely begun to address the human fallout from the war," Bill Frelick, the organization's refugee policy director, said in a statement. "The money needed to care for Iraqi refugees in the Middle East is a tiny fraction of what the US spends on the war."

Several witnesses said they have been frustrated in their efforts to get translators into this country. Marine Captain Zachary J. Iscol told the committee that he has tried many times to gain entry for a translator who risked his life for Iscol's unit in Iraq.

"He wore the Marine Corps uniform in combat," Iscol said of his translator. "Despite his service, [the translator] and his family have now become refugees."

Another witness, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, told the committee how insurgents killed her husband, journalist Steven Vincent, as an Iraqi woman who acted as his translator accompanied him. Vincent was killed two days after publishing an op-ed article in The New York Times that described how Iraqi police forces had been infiltrated by militia forces and others.

Despite the danger, she said, the translator "would not abandon" her husband and was seized by the kidnappers. As the kidnappers said they were setting her free, she was shot three times from behind but survived.

Ramaci-Vincent said in a statement that she tried to help the translator immigrate to the United States, but "I have been told she does not qualify for refugee or asylum status because Iraq is now a democracy. Hence, there would be no reason she would need to flee."