Bush Opens Borders to Iraqi Refugees

Posted on February 14, 2007

Apparently it wasn't enough to open our southern borders with Mexico, we're now opening our borders to 7,000 more Iraqis who are displaced because of the ill-conceived, poorly-executed Iraq War. The Washington Post reports that this is a significant increase over the 202 Iraqis allowed to enter the U.S. last year. The Post says about 2 million Iraqis have left the country since the war began.

This is one excellent reason why we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place: there are going to be millions of displaced refugees and there is going to be nowhere to put them. Saudi Arabia is absolutely terrified of the coming refugee problem, which is why it is building a giant wall along its border with Iraq.

This is just the beginning. The Iraq War is now a civil war, with increasing violence. The neighboring Arab countries are complaining loudly about the influx of refugees which put a terrible economic burden on the host countries. King Abdullah of Jordan already has a big refugee problem on his hands: he has huge camps full of Palestinian refugees. Most of these people just want to go back home, not relocate to a foreign country whose culture and language are absolutely alien to them. Look at England and France: they opened their doors to refugees from oppressive regimes and are now facing a cultural clash and civil unrest like they has never seen before.

But unless the Bush Administration gets its act together and implements the RealPolitik plan proposed by the Iraq Study Group, there isn't going to be a functioning Iraq for these people to return to anytime soon. Taking a few thousand refugees here and there and writing checks to the U.N. is like applying Neosporin to a serious gunshot wound. It's a nice gesture, but it isn't going to stop the patient from dying.