(AFP) – Mar 23, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — After five years of bloody violence, the United States is still accepting only a trickle of refugees from Iraq, despite admitting that conditions for those forced from their homes are getting worse.

State Department figures show that 444 Iraqis were accepted with refugee status into the United States last month, and a total of 1,876 since the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1.

Washington aims this year to receive 12,000 Iraqis who fled to neighboring nations Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Libya or the Gulf states, after they were referred to the US by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"This remains our goal, but we need to speed up the process," said a spokesman from the State Department's refugee office, blaming slow progress on a more "cumbersome" admissions process introduced after the September 11 attacks.

As well as the refugees, the United States has agreed to receive annually 500 Iraqis who have worked directly for the government, including translators, interpreters and their families.

They are eligible for special visas, as are some 5,000 Iraqis who worked directly or indirectly for the United States and who faced serious threats in Iraq over their work with the foreign occupiers.

But the intake is just the tip of the iceberg -- the United Nations estimates that some 2.5 million people have been internally displaced by the war in Iraq, and a further two million have fled to neighbouring countries.

In a recent report, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee rights group, condemned as "inadequate" the United States' contribution to helping the people forced out of their homes by a conflict it had initiated.

"The United States has a moral obligation to give refuge to these and other vulnerable Iraqis, including widowed women with children and the tens of thousands who put their lives on the line to work for Americans in Iraq and are in danger as a result," the study said.

It said the goal of receiving 12,000 refugees this year was "extremely meager" when compared to the numbers accepted from Vietnam and the Balkans, and urged it to take in "at least 30,000 a year for the next few years."

Some 130,000 Vietnamese refugees were received onto US bases after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and further intakes followed. Today they and their children number 995,000, according to the South-east Asia Resource Action Centre.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration admits the conditions for refugees living both inside and outside Iraq is getting worse.

The internally displaced face continuing violence, bad sanitation, poor housing and food shortages, according Lawrence Foley, senior coordinator for Iraqi refugee issues at the State Department.

And those living abroad with no residency permits are often forbidden to work, increasing the risk of poverty, he told a recent congressional hearing -- adding that the situation was going to deteriorate.

"Although refugee and IDP (internally displaced persons) populations have not grown significantly so far in 2008, we expect the needs of these existing populations to intensify with the passage of time," he said.

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