Who's occupying whom?

Folks seem to think it's a bad thing Uncle Sam's asking permission to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Can't say I disagree. At the same time, why are these thousands of Iraqis coming HERE to stay permanently?

The United States accepted 1,141 Iraqi refugees in May, the most the U.S. has taken in one month, and officials say they're on track to meet this fiscal year's goal of 12,000...

May's number was more than half of the total for all of 2007: 1,608. But the U.S. needs to accept (???) about 7,200 more Iraqi refugees over the next four months to meet the State Department's goal. ((This would be the same State Department so deftly handling our international interests, mind you... -- Jemison))

Foley said he expects the U.S. screening and approval of refugees to increase dramatically through September.

Who are these people? Winners of the "free ticket to the U.S." lottery? Folks who gave such extraordinary assistance to the U.S. (after all, Iraq is an unqualified success, right?) they've ALL earned the golden ticket?

Even if you assume these these people can contribute to the U.S., doesn't Iraq need its best and brightest more than ever right now? It seems counterproductive to give an easy escape route to those able to work on solving their own nation's problems.

We did the same thing after VietNam--accepting large numbers of 'refugees.' It was also a useful gesture to assuage our guilt after intervening in Yugoslavia. Nobody is entitled to the privilege of moving to the U.S. The guilt complex some exhibit over how well we have it compared to most just leads to a hopeless effort to let everyone jump into our particular life boat. That doesn't work at sea, and it won't work with mass immigration. All we're doing is capsizing our own ship of state when we need these drowning people to repair their own boats.