The Iraqis next door

‘HAVE you tried any of the new Iraqi restaurants over on Coldwater Canyon?”

That might sound odd today, but within a few years, Angelenos may very well come to learn more about Iraqi cuisine and culture than they ever could have imagined. There may develop a Little Mesopotamia -- possibly with its own marker on the freeway -- in the Valley, or maybe in the OC. You never know.

What’s likely, though, is that this appreciation we’ll gain of Iraqi culture will come about only after our troops have left that country and Baghdad is no longer a front-page dateline. Better late than never, I suppose.

Such a cycle -- the time it takes for a major U.S. overseas commitment to ripple back into our nation’s demographic fabric -- isn’t new. After all, how many Americans were going to Korean restaurants in 1952, or Vietnamese ones two decades later?

Two weeks ago, the White House announced that the U.S. would accept up to 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of this year. It’s an initial trickle; we should be receiving more. Not just because it’s the humane thing to do but because it serves our interests.

Throughout the 1990s, when Saddam Hussein was in power, the U.S. accepted tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees. But since the 2003 invasion, we’ve received fewer than 500 people from a nation in which sectarian violence has sent 2 million people into exile. It’s hard to take refugees from a country that you are trying to pretend is a happily liberated place, relishing the peace and prosperity you’ve delivered to it. But that pretense is wearing thin, and in being more candid about the realities on the ground in Iraq, the Bush administration is going to have to allow more refugees from that country.

Ever since the federal government first recognized refugees as a distinct group in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. has favored people fleeing from enemy states and places where we’ve intervened militarily. From 1982 to 2002, 80% of all refugees fell into those two categories, the largest group coming from Southeast Asia. It should come as little surprise that the U.S. welcomes few refugees from nations that it perceives as having no strategic value.

U.S. military intervention overseas has historically created lasting ties to those lands. In fact, the size of contemporary immigrant communities in this country is often directly related to the intensity of U.S. military interest in the refugees’ home countries.

Thinking back to my own suburban Los Angeles upbringing, I’m struck by how many of my childhood friends and teenage dates were first linked to the U.S. by war. The Korean American classmates I studied with were, in a very real sense, the legacy of the Korean War. Filipinos were first linked to the U.S. by the Spanish-American War in 1898 and then came in large numbers after their role as allies in World War II. The Armenians who transformed my hometown in the 1980s were products of the Cold War. My college girlfriend, who transformed me, was Vietnamese.

We know now that as U.S. influence expands throughout the world, the world’s influence expands here at home. And accepting refugees can improve the nation’s image overseas.

“The more you have refugees entrenched here and becoming Americans, the more they export American values back home,” said Georgetown University political scientist Yossi Shain. “Members of mobilized diasporas become ambassadors for the United States around the world.” Of course, 7,000 refugees do not a diaspora make. But those numbers are likely to grow as the war lingers on. A quick military withdrawal could also lead to louder demands to assist the many Iraqis who have risked their lives for U.S. interests. In the months after the fall of Saigon in April 1975, the U.S. resettled 130,000 Vietnamese refugees. Many more followed.

“Seven thousand is not just a family,” said University of Chicago sociologist Saskia Sassen. “They will come from many families and many communities, and they will build bridges back to these places. This is a form of soft diplomacy that benefits us in the long run.” Although it won’t likely alter our image among hard-liners, opening our doors to Arab Muslim refugees could help mold public opinion in the Middle East.

But whatever the final number of refugees may be, one day soon these new Iraqi arrivals and their children will be part of us. And as unlikely as it may seem at this dark hour, a war that has already killed tens of thousands of people may bring our two nations closer.