[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 24383-24384]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             IRAQI REFUGEES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have a conflict making it impossible for 
me to remain for the very important hour that the Congressional Black 
Caucus has taken on Iraq. I am about to go to the Senate floor 
tomorrow, though, as there is a test on whether there will be a 
filibuster on the D.C. voting rights bill even as D.C. residents are on 
the ground in Iraq fighting, even as I have gone to funerals at 
Arlington Cemetery because of this war.
  We have a President who has announced a token drawdown at the same 
time he is Koreanizing the war, making sure we remain there at least as 
permanently as we have been in some parts of the world, like Korea and 
Germany already. He wants to make a piggy bank of the Congress of the 
United States, and the test is whether we are willing to go along with 
these now-clear goals of the President.
  I want to devote my 5 minutes to asking a question that really needs 
to be asked. We are looking at the battle. I want to ask, is there 
really still an Iraq? Three million refugees have left the country 
since 2003. Another 3 million have been internally displaced. Some have 
called it ethnic cleansing. I believe it is involuntary ethnic 
cleansing, because in a civil war you want to win, not chase the other 
people out. We didn't want the Southerners to go; we just wanted to win 
the Civil War.
  There is a kind of ethnic cleansing going on in Iraq, and let me show 
it and urge Members to focus on it. Thousands leave every month, and 95 
percent remain in the Middle East. What kind of a cauldron are we 
making in the Middle East?
  Syria has been best in taking them, and they are full up. Iraqis are 
the leading nationality seeking asylum in industrialized countries. 
Three hundred Iraqis returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein. So 
encouraged were they that they came back to their land, many of them 
from Iran.
  By 2006, hundreds of thousands of new refugees were fleeing the 
country, and last week we heard there is less violence? Sure, those 
people that are leaving. They are being driven out of their own country 
as a result of a civil war.
  What is most shameful as I looked at the data was to find who was 
taking the refugees. We know who is responsible for them leaving. We 
know who invaded their country. Well, the U.K. has taken 22,300, a much 
smaller country than we. Australia has taken 11,000, and the United 
States has taken 6,000. And they say if we leave, there will be a major 
fratricide. So why aren't we taking some of these people? Why are our 
allies willing to take them, even

[[Page 24384]]

though they had less to do with the fleeing in the first place.
  The number of people displaced internally is shocking. It has risen 
in 2006 alone by 50 percent. Let me show you how we are failing in our 
duties. In 1992, 1993 and 1994, we were taking over 4,000 Iraqi 
refugees and settling them. Now in 2005, we report settling 200. This 
is a moral failing when you invade somebody else's country and you 
won't take their refugees and you insist upon staying there and 
fomenting violence when 80 percent say they want you out of the 
country.
  Let me read from an independent journalist. I don't think you can say 
Iraq exists any more. There has been very effective systemic ethnic 
cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias from areas that are now 
mostly Shia, but the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have 
mixed families. With a name like ``Omar,'' a person is distinctly 
Sunni. It is a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name 
``Omar'' alone, and Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian 
Shiite militias, and they are never going to let it go.
  The refugee story alone is reason enough to begin the exodus from 
Iraq tomorrow. That is what they want. That is what the majority of the 
American people want. That's what we must see happen before we leave 
this Congress this year.

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