U.S. pledge to help Iraqis who aided occupation largely unfulfilled

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/14/185851/us-pledge-to-help-iraqis-who-aided.html



Angela Williams, in black scarf, an American Muslim who works for the U.S. State Department, talks to her friend Ansam, an Iraqi translator for coalition forces whose last name is withheld because of death threats against her, inside Baghdad's Green Zone in March 2007.

U.S. pledge to help Iraqis who aided occupation largely unfulfilled
By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — Ten years after the United States’ invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and set off a sectarian war that continues to this day, thousands of Iraqis are eligible for resettlement to the U.S. because they risked their lives to help the war effort as interpreters, cultural advisers and other support staff.

But of the legislated allotment of about 25,000 “special immigrant visas” – which offer permanent residency as a reward to Iraqis who worked with the U.S. government – just 4,669 cases have been approved since 2008, and the program is scheduled to end in September.

Advocates for the Iraqi applicants say the resettlement process for such U.S. allies has been shamefully slow and complicated, and remains an ordeal despite recent tweaks that have increased the flow of immigrants.

And the glacial bureaucracy in Washington, Iraqi applicants and their advocates say, can have disastrous consequences in Iraq, where people who worked with Americans receive death threats from Sunni and Shiite Muslim militants who still view them as “enemy collaborators,” even though the U.S. military withdrew from the country 15 months ago.