IT'S ALL RELATIVE
The New York Times today has a story on a different kind of body count in Iraq that hasn't gotten as much coverage in the mainstream media as needed. As the piece explains:
"...nearly two million Iraqis...have fled the vicious chaos of their country since the American invasion nearly four years ago, flooding neighboring states, especially Jordan and Syria, but also Lebanon and Egypt.
As they leave Iraq at a rate of nearly 3,000 a day, the refugees are threatening the social and economic fabric of both Jordan and Syria. In Jordan, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are trying to blend into a country of only 6 million inhabitants, including about 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees. The governments classify most of the Iraqis as visitors, not refugees."
When you consider that Iraq's population stood at around 26 million last year, these numbers would translate to around 23 million Americans turning into refugees out of our 300 million strong numbers today.
Looking at it from the perspective of a neighboring country like Jordan, the proportional magnitude of these numbers are just as massive. The article doesn't state how many of those two million Iraqi refugees are going into Jordan, other than saying "hundreds of thousands".
If you assume 500,000 of these two million are entering Jordan with a population of 6 million, then that be like seeing an illegal influx of around 25 million into the United States.
That's over twice the number of illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States, that already has generated so much political debate and controversy here.
It's a whole new dimension on the challenge of Iraq. The complete article is worth reading in it's entirety.
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