clipped from: www.cjrdaily.org
Conspicuously absent from these narratives, however, are stories like that of Osman Yarrow, in which a refugee's struggle concludes with an arrival across the Atlantic. As the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish reported last week, there's probably good reason for that.
In 2005, Kranish notes, the Office of Immigration Statistics reported that a whopping 198 of the 53,738 refugees admitted to the United States that year were from Iraq. Compared to 1,849 Iranians, 1,665 Ethiopians, and 8,517 Laotians, the number of refugees arriving from what is arguably the most broken country in the world seems particularly startling -- and worthy of a bit of attention from the news media.
But wait, Kranish also reports that the quota for Iraqi refugees allowed into the United States is increasing for 2007 -- to a total of 500.
The story raises a host of questions about U.S. policy regarding Iraqi refugees, all of which journalists should be asking. Colin Powell, cautioning about the consequences of invading Iraq, famously said, "If you break it, you own it." Well, we broke Iraq, and part of owning that fact would seem to be accepting responsibility for the human shards that were sent scattering. Kranish, in his December 11 article, was among the first to start asking these questions, and he said in a phone interview that he expects there to be more stories in the coming months that explore the U.S. government's relationship to Iraq's refugees.