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A VOICE AGAINST REFUGE. This I didn't expect: Spencer Ackerman has come out against bringing Arab or Kurdish Iraqi refugees to the U.S., on the grounds that they might secretly be terrorists:
the attacks that have occurred within the Green Zone suggest that merely working with U.S. forces does not indicate a lack of hostility to Americans. How could one set up a system establishing who is and isn't a security risk to allow into the U.S.? If we take Kennedy and Packer's advice, it's incredibly easy to imagine an aggrieved Iraqi obtaining a job with the U.S. in order to travel to America and seek revenge.... the last thing we should do is make the prospect of jihadist exfiltration easier.Easy to imagine, perhaps, unless you know about how our system of mass asylum screening can work. During the 1996 Iraqi Kurd evacuation, people were brought to the American territory of Guam for screening, and while their asylum applications were fast-tracked, they still had to go through them and spend months being evaluated for entry while living far, far away from the mainland. During that process, a few were judged to be security risks and jailed for more than a year until deportation procedings could be completed. Yes, people who have applied for asylum in the U.S. have later been accused of conspiring with terrorists. However, their asylum claims were frequently the last-dtich efforts of people with inadequate documentation trying avoid deportation. While it's obviously not possible to know what lies in every man or woman's heart, Westerners who've been working with folks in Iraq for years have some sense of of whether their personal translators, drivers, and so on are trustworthy or not, and a system that prevents refugees from having access to either the mainland or the U.S. legal system until they have been screened worked pretty well in 1996. There's a big difference between someone who comes to America illegally, claims asylum, and then disappears before their claim is resolved (something that wouldn't be allowed to happen, post-9/11, anyway, but which did happen earlier) and someone brought over in American custody, and who remains in American custody (though not subject to its laws), until the claim is fully evaluated. Further, Packer's argument for admitting refugeees was about what to do as the U.S. withdraws, not what to do during a period of military escalation:
If the United States leaves Iraq, our last shred of honor and decency will require us to save as many of these Iraqis as possible. In June, a U.S. Embassy cable about the lives of the Iraqi staff was leaked to The Washington Post. Among many disturbing examples of intimidation and fear was this sentence: "In March, a few staff approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate." The cable gave no answer. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad does not issue visas. Iraqis who want to come to the United States must make their way across dangerous territory to a neighboring country that has a U.S. Embassy with a consular section. Iran and Syria do not; Jordan has recently begun to bar entry to Iraqi men under the age of 35. For a military translator to have a chance at coming to the United States, he must be able to prove that he worked for at least a year with U.S. forces and have the recommendation of a general officer--nearly impossible in most cases. Our current approach essentially traps Iraqis inside their country, where they will have to choose, like Osman, between jihadists and death squads.Packer suggested issuing travel visas that would take individuals directly to the U.S., but I think the 1996 system of organized mass transport, followed by screening while living on a U.S. territory and learning about life in the U.S., might work better for large numbers of people. The International Rescue Committee has more on how the refugee resettlement process normally works in the U.S.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
