This is from the Los Angeles Times yesterday (Hat tip: Center for Immigration Studies).
Reporting from Amman, Jordan – The man who had fought Al Qaeda in Iraq sat in the waiting room of the immigration office. He watched others go up before him. After several hours, they called his name: Saad Oraibi Ghafoori.
In a way, the waiting burned him. He had once led more than 600 men in Baghdad; Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders came to him for help. Now he lived in a nondescript home in Jordan’s capital with an upset wife and two restless children — a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl — who had been hoping for more than a year to get the call to go to America.
He had sat in classes given by the International Organization for Migration, learning about U.S. apartment rental prices and how to apply for food stamps. He was ready to do whatever the Americans wanted: If they wished him to train U.S. forces heading to Iraq, he would do it; if they wanted him to fight in Afghanistan, he would go.
[…..]
In the office that day in July, Ghafoori was finally summoned to a table. The case officer was blunt: He had been rejected and there was no point in appealing the case.
We let all sorts of other Iraqis into the US, this article suggests we need to consider the fighters too!
Last year, the U.S. government removed hurdles that had made it difficult for its Iraqi employees whose lives were endangered to flee to America. It also cleared similar obstacles for Iraqis working with U.S. companies. The number of Iraqis accepted in America through the State Department’s refugee assistance program jumped from 1,600 to nearly 14,000 in 2008 and is expected to reach 18,000 this year.
But Ghafoori’s case poses a policy challenge for the U.S. government. How should it handle the pool of 100,000 paramilitary fighters called the Sons of Iraq, many of them former insurgents, who have little in common with the Iraqi translators and civil servants that the refugee assistance program aims to help?
Does the United States have any obligation to men like Ghafoori, whom the U.S. military once funded and fought with against a common enemy?
Here is my question, were the Sons of Iraq fighting to rid their country of the Al Qaeda scourge or were they fighting for a plane ticket to the US? I thought it was the former.
Finally, I’ve never heard of this and it bears looking into:
One of the few routes available to him would be Homeland Security’s Significant Public Benefit Parole program, which is run in close association with the Pentagon to bring in people who served the war efforts. But the program operates in near secrecy and is the equivalent of winning the lottery: The combination of official backing and luck must align to bring the person inside.