February 26, 2007	Monday	Safar 8, 1428

LOS ANGELES: “Have you tried any of the new Iraqi restaurants over on Coldwater Canyon?” That might sound odd today, but within a few years, Angelenos may very well come to learn more about Iraqi cuisine and culture than they ever could have imagined. There may develop a Little Mesopotamia -- possibly with its own marker on the freeway -- in the Valley, or maybe in the OC. You never know.

What’s likely, though, is that this appreciation we’ll gain of Iraqi culture will come about only after our troops have left that country and Baghdad is no longer a front-page dateline. Better late than never, I suppose.

Such a cycle -- the time it takes for a major US overseas commitment to ripple back into our nation’s demographic fabric -- isn’t new. After all, how many Americans were going to Korean restaurants in 1952, or Vietnamese ones two decades later?

Two weeks ago, the White House announced that the US would accept up to 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of this year. It’s an initial trickle; we should be receiving more. Not just because it’s the humane thing to do but because it serves our interests.

Throughout the 1990s, when Saddam Hussein was in power, the US accepted tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees. But since the 2003 invasion, we’ve received fewer than 500 people from a nation in which sectarian violence has sent two million people into exile. It’s hard to take refugees from a country that you are trying to pretend is a happily liberated place, relishing the peace and prosperity you’ve delivered to it. But that pretence is wearing thin, and in being more candid about the realities on the ground in Iraq, the Bush administration is going to have to allow more refugees from that country.

Ever since the federal government first recognised refugees as a distinct group in the aftermath of World War II, the US has favoured people fleeing from enemy states and places where we’ve intervened militarily. From 1982 to 2002, 80 per cent of all refugees fell into those two categories, the largest group coming from Southeast Asia. It should come as little surprise that the US welcomes few refugees from nations that it perceives as having no strategic value.

US military intervention overseas has historically created lasting ties to those lands. In fact, the size of contemporary immigrant communities in this country is often directly related to the intensity of US military interest in the refugees’ home countries.

We know that as US influence expands throughout the world, the world’s influence expands here at home. And accepting refugees can improve the nation’s image overseas.

“Seven thousand is not just a family,” said University of Chicago sociologist Saskia Sassen. “They will come from many families and many communities, and they will build bridges back to these places. This is a form of soft diplomacy that benefits us in the long run.”—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service