Obama’s Guam Option - A hundred million dollars to resettle forty thousand Iraqis

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/01/obamas-guam-opt.html

January 9, 2009
Obama’s Guam Option

I know Iraqi refugees are somewhere around 87th on anyone’s agenda. I know I should be writing about Gaza or economic stimulus—another day. But today, let me call your attention away from those pressing matters to a new report, scheduled for release on Monday, by Natalie Ondiak and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress (soon to be the Obama Administration’s Heritage or A.E.I.). It’s called “Operation Safe Haven Iraq 2009,” and it’s a detailed proposal for an airlift of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have worked with Americans there and whose lives are in danger, in perpetuum, as a result.

The report establishes the rationale for such an operation, familiar to readers of this blog (where the “Guam option” was first proposed over a year ago). It also lays out, in the careful manner of Washington think-tank papers, the steps that the new President would need to take, to wit:


1. Appoint a White House coordinator
2. Review current efforts
3. Finish background checks of qualified Iraqis
4. Begin a four-to-eight-week airlift, probably to Guam
5. Make sure all government agencies—State, Homeland Security, the military—work together
6. Resettle eligible Iraqis here after they’ve been “processed” outside the country



This idea might not hold much appeal for President Obama, for obvious reasons: security risks, cost (CAP roughly estimates a hundred million dollars to resettle forty thousand Iraqis), bad publicity. Iraq wasn’t Obama’s war; he’ll be sorely tempted to want to put it behind him. He could easily point to the current half-measures, such as the Special Immigrant Visa program set up by Congress, and say that, with recent security improvements in Iraq, there’s no pressing need for anything more drastic.

The truth, though, is that present efforts remain sluggish and inadequate. According to CAP, only six hundred Iraqis made it here in 2008, under the Special Immigrant Visa program, which permits five thousand a year. And even a political-military miracle in Iraq won’t protect those Iraqis who identified themselves with the American project and in doing so marked themselves as traitors in the eyes of extremists. Their emergency continues. An airlift would cut through all the obstacles to ending it, all at once.

[dkofos]

1. Why not put a fence around the Crawford ranch and drop them there??

[charlie]

2. Guam's being repurposed

to accomodate base closures in Japan. I don't know if there'll be enough room for 40K transplants.

Better to make Dubya and Dick put their money where their mouths are, after all that yammering about bringing "freedom" to Iraqis. Seize their shit through eminent domain and give the refugees a choice -- if you like greenery, go to Kennebunkport, if you prefer the prairie, Cheyenne.

[SoCalDem]

3. Has anyone consulted the Guamanians yet?

I know is is very UNlikely to happen, but I see this as yet another in a long string, of "guys drawing lines on maps". One would think that the traumas we are living with NOW, would give them something to think about before they decide that "moving a population" is a great idea..

If we are serious about "protecting" the Iraqis who worked with us, we should be ready to absorb them into the USA...not dump them on to an island in the Pacific Ocean..

[Journeyman]

4. And what say the people of Guam about this "plan"? . . .

What impact will the importation of forty thousand unemployed people have on the economy there? Would the Iraqis be merely airlifted from one untenable situation into another? Where would they live? Would we need to build them housing? Feed them?

I admit to little knowledge of Guam -- but from a quick search on the internet, I find there are only 170-some thousand people there, and they're mainly dependent on tourism and the military bases on the island for their economy. What the hell kind of impact will a 25% population influx place on the lives of the people there? And how soon would it be before the situation deteriorated, probably into violence?

Maybe we owe those who've worked for us in Iraq a better life than they'll have after we leave. It's definitely something that needs to be discussed. But dumping our problem on the people of Guam seems a desperate, ill-conceived solution, one fraught with perils for all concerned.