Well, by golly, Matthew Lee, intrepid AP reporter is back (two hours and twenty minutes ago!), but a couple of days late. Every month like clockwork Mr. Lee bashed the Bush Administration for not admitting enough Iraqi refugees to satisfy the insatiable non-governmental agencies and the volags appetites for new immigrants to resettle in a town near you. I remember back in October he was on the story before the stroke of midnight on Halloween with the paltry numbers for October. I missed him for a few months, but here he is again.
The story is basically the same although the numbers were up for last month.
First, he always tells us how bad the numbers have been, better now, but overall they have been abysmal:
After months of falling short of the average number of admissions needed to meet the target, officials said 1,141 Iraqi refugees had been admitted in May, the first time since 2003 that the 1,000 per month mark has been surpassed. Officials also for the first time released figures for Iraqi refugees in the processing pipeline who have not yet been allowed in.
Then we learn AGAIN that compared to benevolent Sweden we stink (oh, never any mention that Sweden is having problems and deporting Iraqis, don’t confuse anyone with the facts!):
The 12,000 target is still far lower than other many countries, notably Sweden, which has admitted about 40,000 since 2003, and only a small slice of the some 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries, mainly Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt.
There is always the mention of “critics” (hey, Matthew why don’t you ever ask non-critics like me and Judy) and the United States’s moral duty:
The United States has come under criticism from advocacy groups and lawmakers for its poor performance on admitting Iraqi refugees who have fled violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Many critics say, and officials acknowledge, that the administration has a moral obligation to the refugees and is not doing enough to help them.
And, finally James (we deserve a whipping) Foley the State Department coordinator admits that they know they have fallen short but they are trying oh so hard:
We have a long way to go and we recognize that,” said James Foley, the State Department’s coordinator for Iraqi refugees. Foley was appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to streamline the admissions process and meet the goal of admitting 12,000 Iraqi refugees during the current budget year.
“It’s a tall order,” he said. “It’s a difficult hurdle, but we are determined to succeed and we are increasingly confident that we can. The infrastructure is now fully in place.”
There is NEVER any mention of security concerns that Homeland Security has about admitting Iraqis (the Muslim Iraqis that is). And, NEVER NEVER do these lazy reporters discuss the alternatives to bringing tens of thousands to America, or NEVER any mention that hundreds of thousands of the Iraqi refugees in nearby countries have been there since Saddam Hussein drove them out of Iraq.
It’s always the same old story: Millions of suffering Iraqis, it’s all our fault, bring them to America ASAP and Bush is bad.
If you have the stamina and the interest, go to our Iraqi Refugees category. We have written 163 posts on the topic in the past year. I’ll bet we know more about the subject then Mr. Lee.