"Iraqi refugees
with relatives in the United States should be
considered for U.S. resettlement on the basis of
family reunification, dropping the requirement
that they enter as refugees or migrants," said
the report, "Escaping Mayhem and Murder: Iraqi
Refugees in the Middle East."
The report,
issued Sept. 10 in Washington, was based on a
seven-member USCCB fact-finding mission
undertaken July 2-13. Among the seven
participants were Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick,
retired archbishop of Washington, and Bishop
Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., chairman of
the U.S. bishops' domestic policy committee.
The delegation
visited Istanbul, Turkey; Beirut, Lebanon;
Amman, Jordan; and Damascus, Syria. These
countries currently are home to an estimated 2
million Iraqi refugees.
"At the time of
our visit, an estimated 50,000 people a month
continued to stream across Iraq's borders,
mostly to Syria," the report said. "As of late
August, the estimate was 60,000."
Iraqi refugees,
when added to Palestinian refugees already in
other countries, account for up to 10 percent of
Syria's population and 24 percent of Jordan's,
the report said.
"In our
estimation, the number who actually arrive in
the U.S. by the end of this calendar year will
be about 2,500," the report said. "The process
of getting security clearances for those
accepted takes an average of 65 days all by
itself," it added.
"Among the tens
of thousands of Iraqis working for the U.S.
government and U.S. contractors in Iraq today,
many are in mortal danger," the report said.
"The U.S. should consider allowing them to apply
in place for U.S. resettlement without having to
make the dangerous and expensive trip to a
nearby country, which may not admit them in any
case."
The report spoke
of "the special responsibility of the United
States" in addressing Iraqi refugee issues. The
United States went to war with Iraq in 2003.
"What was not
evident to us before our trip was the extent to
which many refugees have been specifically
victimized for their association with
Americans," it said. "We understood that U.S.
government interpreters were being targeted, but
did not appreciate that the extremists in Iraq
were also wreaking retribution on Iraqis with
even tenuous relationships with U.S. policies,
such as cooks and drivers for U.S. contractors."
One host
country's government told the USCCB delegation
that it suspects "the U.S. is interested in
assisting only those with close associations
with our country, leaving the host countries to
absorb the rest."
Syria estimates
it hosts 1.4 million Iraqi refugees. Jordan is
home to up to 750,000 refugees. Lebanon's
refugee population is estimated at between
25,000 and 50,000. Turkey has the fewest
refugees at 10,000.
Jordan said July
25 it was spending about $1 billion annually for
refugees. The government in August said also
children, including refugee children, could
attend public schools, and that it would open 30
public schools in Amman, the capital, for Iraqi
refugees.
Syria announced
a policy in early September to require Iraqis to
obtain a visa in Baghdad before entry to Syria
is allowed. Even though Syria has offered free
school for refugee children, only about 10
percent of the estimated 300,000 school-age
children go to classes, the report said, "due to
the scarcity of classrooms and teachers, the
need of many refugee children to work, and, in
one case we saw, the lack of an Iraqi document
certifying previous schooling."
About 19 percent of
Syria's Iraqi refugees are Christian, with about
half Chaldean Catholics. About 15 percent of
Jordan's Iraqi refugees are Christian, mostly
Chaldean.
The USCCB report
recommended that the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees give training to refugee workers about
which refugees have "protection needs" and
should be referred to the UNHCR on those
grounds.
"We encountered
clear protection cases that had not been so
referred," the report said. It added that, since
the U.S. has no resettlement quota for difficult
medical cases, the UNHCR should go "full speed"
in referring those cases to the U.S.
resettlement program.
