Posted on 11/28/2008 10:31:14 AM PST by BGHater
The European Union says it is ready to accept up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees, many of whom are living in extreme hardship in Jordan and Syria.
The agreement came at an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday, where interior ministers received a new report on conditions at refugee camps.
Germany said it would take in about 2,500 of the refugees.
Priority will be given to those with medical needs, torture victims, single mothers and religious minorities.
The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, welcomed the EU pledge as a "positive step", saying it had been pressing the EU for 18 months to offer more protection to vulnerable Iraqi refugees.
So far, only 10% of those resettled by the UNHCR have found a home in EU countries, mainly Sweden and the Netherlands, the BBC's Oana Lungescu reports from Brussels.
Sweden says it received about 18,000 Iraqi asylum seekers in 2007 - more than half the total that entered the EU last year.
Sweden has a well-established Iraqi community totalling about 100,000 but says other EU countries should take in a bigger share of Iraqis, who have mostly fled violence and poverty.
Not a binding commitment
A UK Home Office spokesperson said the UK had "already shown its clear determination to support Iraqi refugees through the Gateway Programme, with over 200 people resettled in the UK since April and more arriving in the coming months".
"We will continue to work with our European partners to ensure that Iraqi refugees are resettled across Europe," the spokesperson added.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Wow. Did not know that.
Stockholm is an Arabic and North African city.
Demographics IS history.
while Los Angeles is a northern suburb of Chihuahua, Mexico and San Diego is a northern end of Tijuana...
Why can’t they just go back to Iraq?
Hey take some Somalis too....
Why would they do that? These are arabs who have already found refuge in an arab country. Over time conditions in Iraq will stabilize, and if they are in Jordan or Syria they can very easily return at that time. In the meantime, they are still living among fellow arabs.
This is a problem that doesn’t need to be solved. It will solve itself.
Wow; this is really a bone-headed mistake.
What the hell is the point of fighting and dying for the freedom of a country, only to let thousands of their people into your country? Why can’t they stay in Iraq and give at least a fraction of the efforts the soldiers made in trying to build progress in Iraq? Reminds me of how we let in 70,000 Somali cockroaches as a reward for Black Hawk Down.
I think that accepting Muslims into a country is pure foolishness, just an invitation for trouble.
We've spent all this money making their snakehole habitable and they want to leave.
Of course we've taken several thousand into our underpopulated nation because we are a huge melting pot.
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