By Neil King Jr. and Yochi J. Dreazen
05/24/2007

To read the entire article, click here.

Below is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

Washington -- A NEW BATTLEGROUND has opened in the brawl between the Bush administration and Democrats in the U.S. Congress over the Iraq war: the plight of millions of Iraqis who have fled the fighting and are now stuck in countries like Jordan and Syria.

While thousands of Iraqis continue to flee the country daily, the U.S. over the last seven months has let in just 69 refugees from Iraq, including only one last month. One big hitch is that the Bush administration has yet to decide on a method to screen potential Iraqi refugees for possible terrorism ties. Nor does the U.S. have any facilities in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to process immigration requests from Iraqis who worked for the U.S. Embassy, the military or U.S. contractors.

But even if the U.S. gets all the procedures in place, the administration is still likely to allow in only a few thousand Iraqis by late September. Democrats want to do much more and are pushing legislation to dramatically increase the number of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S., including thousands of interpreters, drivers and other employees whose service for the U.S. has put their lives in jeopardy.

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The small number of Iraqis allowed into the U.S. so far infuriates Democrats like Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who say the U.S. hasn't been swift enough in addressing the moral obligation to help Iraqis fleeing the chaos set off by the American invasion. Rep. Blumenauer notes that Sweden is planning to accept 25,000 Iraqi refugees this year, far more than the U.S. is contemplating accepting.

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The first refugee bill, which would expand the number of Iraqi and Afghan military translators allowed to settle in the U.S. from 50 to 500 a year, was passed in both chambers of Congress by a wide margin this week but has yet to go to the president.

Rep. Blumenauer, meanwhile, has introduced a far more ambitious bill that would allow 20,000 Iraqis into the U.S. this year, followed by 15,000 more for each of the next four years.

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Virtually no Republicans, however, have joined the push to get larger numbers of Iraqis into the country, complicating the bill's chances of making it into law. Mr. Blumenauer's bill has only attracted a single Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut, a moderate Republican and frequent critic of the administration's handling of Iraq.

"Democrats have seized on this issue with far more alacrity than Republicans," says Kenneth Bacon, the president of Refugees International, a nongovernmental organization here. "There is an element of awkwardness for Republicans because championing refugees means admitting that the administration's policies in Iraq are failing."

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has erected a series of bureaucratic obstacles that make it difficult for Iraqi refugees to make it to the U.S.

Under an agreement between the United Nations and the U.S. government, the U.N. refers refugee applications to the State Department, which is supposed to prescreen each applicant and then pass them to the Department of Homeland Security so they can be vetted for possible terrorist ties. The U.N. says it has referred more than 4,300 cases to the U.S. government, but virtually none have been let into the U.S. as refugees.

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