That is the question the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, asked in a piece on the Kentucky Iraqi alleged terrorist arrest yesterday. As Iraq becomes safer, we take more and more refugees! Does that make sense?
The bigger question is why are we taking refugees from Iraq at all? Resettlement to the United States should be used only as the absolute last resort for people who will surely be killed if they stay where they are and who have nowhere else — nowhere whatsoever — to go. There are lots of Arab countries where Iraqis have been going for some time, notably Syria and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia’s a big, empty place right next door. The State Department sort of followed that policy for the first few years of our Mesopotamian adventure, with fewer that 200 Iraqi refugees admitted in FY 2006 and about 1,600 in FY 2007. But the following year the number ballooned to nearly 14,000, and it’s been more than 18,000 for each of the past two years. So, as things have gotten less dangerous in Iraq, we’ve begun importing more refugees.
Just a reminder! There is the war model we learned about when a 1999 National War College report was declassified. It’s analogous to never letting a good crisis go to waste. Never let a good war go to waste—use it to bring more immigrants to America while getting paid for it!