Iraqi Refugees and the United States of America

In 2019, with rising instability across the world due to ethnic, religious and national tensions, United Nations proclaimed that the Refugee crisis around the world as a “worldwide crisis” with half of the refugee population believed to be children.

In such a situation, Donald Trump’s government set the cap of admitting refugees to enter into USA legally at 18,000 for the fiscal year of 2020. This is a glaring decrease from 2019’s 30,000. In comparison, during Barack Obama’s last year in office, USA had permitted 110,000 refugees to enter. According to statistics, 300,000 people are waiting for admission as refugees and with the new cap, only 6% of them would be able to enter. From 2019, the terms of granting admission have also changed where refugees will be evaluated based on the threat they face in their home country and not on the basis of which part of the world they are from.

According to government data, since the 2008 fiscal year, the United States has accepted 47,331 Iraqi refugees under the Direct Access Program, giving priority in the resettlement process to those who were affiliated with the American government during the Iraq war. Of those, 3,249 were accepted during the first three years of the Trump administration.

Meanwhile Iraq has been facing escalating violence and unrest on a daily basis as protesters are resorting to violence to demand an end to corruption and better access to resources. This has made refugee applicants more anxious, especially the ones who had dreamed of a better life in USA as they were crucial in helping the US army before the war in Iraq supposedly ended in 2011.

After the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that removed Saddam Hussein from power, thousands of Iraqis worked with American troops, diplomats and contractors, serving as translators and cultural advisers. They even provided menial services for the army such as cooking and cleaning for them to the extent that their houses were also used as safe havens for American soldiers. These Iraqis and their families were threatened, and in many cases attacked, by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who accused them of siding with Americans during the eight-year war.

An estimated 110,000 Iraqis are still waiting to be approved as refugees based on their wartime assistance. The Trump administration capped the number eligible at only 4,000.

Interviews for these applicants at the US embassy in Baghdad and Consulate in Erbil has also considerably slowed down to the extent where interviews are barely held now. This is due to the reason that most of the employees serving there (who conducted the interviews) had been retracted back home because of safety and security concerns.

Employees of US Citizenship and Immigration Programmes would also visit Iraq on routine rounds in order to conduct interviews but this has also come to a halt for the longest time. The intensive, critical background checks on these applicants are also taking time which is slowing down the entire admission process regardless of their high priority.

Even though these are the same Iraqis who faced persecution in their own homes for helping the US army in expectation for a better life after the war, they are now being denied entry due to the new change in the US administration that is often considered Trump’s own brand of Islamophobia. The decrease in number has been justified by the threat that US faces from ISIS and the perception that these refugees could pose a security threat to their nation.

The sudden restriction in the number of refugees to be granted entry does create apprehension among human rights activists and the aspiring refugees themselves. It also creates a vacuum in the international arena now that the US has specifically reduced their intake, refugees have been left wondering as to where else could they seek refuge.

Sukanya Bhattacharya

Intern, AGA