Ken Bacon*, head of a major refugee industry lobbying group, Refugees International (RI), urged his supporters to send letters to President-elect Obama and tell him to increase the number of Iraqi refugees entering the US to 105,500 (and they aren’t promoting the truly persecuted Christians), while the Bush Administration has proposed 17,000. Our worldwide ceiling for FY2009 is 80,000.
From a Refugees International action alert this past week:
Increase the number of Iraqis resettled into the U.S. to 105,500.
The number just keeps growing! Everytime they put out a release the number goes up by 10,000 or so. Here is a post back in September where groups including RI were talking 80,000-90,000, and were very displeased with the State Department’s measly 17,000.
We brought around 13,000 in FY 2008 and a large number of these refugees are very unhappy as we have reported many times recently. Well educated and expecting work according to their educations, Iraqis entering the US in large numbers over the last few months have not been silent about their disappointment. See one of many posts on the unhappy Iraqis here.
Are these groups like RI completely isolated and out of touch that they don’t know this dissatisfaction is going on in city after city in the US? How can they continue to advocate for more Iraqis when the ones we have are not being cared for? It makes no sense!
And, won’t these 105,500 competent Iraqis be competing for increasingly scarce jobs if the economy continues to tighten as predicted? How is that going to sit with out-of-work Americans, after so many fellow Americans fought and died for Iraq to have its freedom?
*Ken Bacon, if you recall, was the Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton Administration whose claim to fame was that he released Linda Tripp’s personel file which served to draw the media to Linda Tripp and away from Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Bet you a buck, he ends up in the State Department if Hillary is Secretary of State, afterall, in the ways of Washington—she owes him.
Refugees International is chaired by Farooq Kathwari. You can read more about him here.