U.S. defends the way it deals with Iraqi refugees

washington -- The Bush administration Friday defended its handling of Iraqi refugees in an effort to tamp down a growing controversy over how quickly the U.S. is processing and admitting asylum seekers from the war-torn country.

Criticism of the way Washington is handling Iraqi refugees has been growing since the publication this week of a cable by Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, charging that the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t processing Iraqi visas quickly enough.

Confronting millions of Iraqi refugees, lawmakers and aid groups have been particularly concerned about Iraqis who have worked for the United States.

Many are targeted for death by militants, who have killed more than 250 Iraqi translators since 2003.

Although the State Department had originally said it hoped to resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the U.S. by the end of September, it scaled down that target to 2,000 and is unlikely to meet even that goal. Just 1,135 Iraqi refugees had made it into the country as of Thursday.

On Friday, State Department and Homeland Security officials defended that record and said that they had created a new infrastructure to process refugees in a few months. They dismissed critical reports as “inaccurate.”

“We have pulled people from around the world to answer the call of the Iraqi refugee issue,” said Paul Rosenzweig, deputy assistant secretary for policy at Homeland Security, which this week appointed two senior officials to oversee the issue. Rosenzweig said projections showed the U.S. would take in about 12,000 Iraqis in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

“We think we’ve reached a pretty solid, steady state,” he said. “We’re actually quite pleased and proud of what we’ve done throughout the country.”

A flood of Iraqi refugees has overwhelmed neighboring countries.

More than 4 million people have been displaced by the war, with an additional 2,000 joining them every day.

More than half have left Iraq, with as many as 1.5 million now in Syria and about 500,000 in Jordan.

On Friday, the United Nations said that Iraqi asylum applications had soared to record levels, with twice as many as last year. In the first six months of this year, 19,800 Iraqis asked to be resettled in 36 Western countries. Almost half applied to go to Sweden, which has a large Iraqi community and takes in about 1,000 refugees a month.

State Department officials told lawmakers this week that the U.S. had a duty to help Iraqi refugees.

“We have a moral obligation to protect Iraqi refugees, particularly those who belong to persecuted religious minorities as well as those who have worked closely with the United States government since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” said Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey.

But critics were disappointed that the administration would limit that help to 12,000 people in the coming fiscal year.

“Given the size of this refugee crisis -- and the thousands and thousands of Iraqis who are at risk because of their work with the United States itself -- it is both disappointing and shocking that the U.S. is not willing to bring more Iraqis to safety in this country next year,” said Eleanor Acer, spokeswoman for the nonprofit group Human Rights First.

She said that when the political will exists, the U.S. has historically taken in far greater numbers of refugees. About 250,000 Europeans displaced by World War II came to the U.S. from 1948 to 1952, and in 1975 the country absorbed 131,000 Vietnamese refugees from May 1 to Dec. 20, the group said.

About 65,000 Iraqis work for the Pentagon in Iraq under contract or subcontract, and 81,000 others work for U.S. reconstruction projects, Human Rights Watch estimated.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced a measure with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would help those U.S.-employed Iraqis.

It would also speed up the processing of their applications and require the State Department to report to Congress more frequently about refugee issues. The proposed Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act is backed by a bipartisan group of 14 senators and is expected to come up for a vote next week.

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nicole.gaouette@latimes.com