Okay. I'm finally on-board. An article from the Washington Post today has convinced me our immigration policy needs a major overhaul. The Post tells the story of Saman Kareem Ahmad, who spent 4 years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq. Marine Captain Trent A. Gibson said, "Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis." He has commendations from the secretary of the Navy and from then-Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus. All these things helped him emigrate to the U.S. in 2006.

Saman was part of that group of 50 Iraqi and Afghan translators who were admitted under a special visa program, many of whom had been marked for death for collaborating with the U.S. They were allowed entrance into the U.S. only under Congressional pressure. Bush was against it. The number of translators allowed to emigrate was increased to 500 in 2008 but is to revert to 50 in 2009. As of December, 648 of the 5300 Iraqi translators now working for U.S. forces in Iraq had their applications pending. Let them die for us but don't let them live with us. (See the Alternet story from July 2007 that told of another translator's fate. The Assyrian International News Agency has a piece on "Aiding Iraqi Translators.")

Saman has been working at Quantico Marine Corps Base "where he teaches Arabic language and culture to Marines deploying to Iraq." He has applied for permanent residence status -- a green card. He has been turned down. Why? Because he once had belonged to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), "which U.S. immigration officials deemed an 'undesignated terrorist organization' for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Yup. I'm not kidding. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services determined that KDP forces "conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein's regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom."

The Kurds experience with the United States has not been good. The Middle East Report On-line said: "At the end of the 1990-1991 Gulf war, the Kurds . . . heeded the call of the first Bush administration and rose against the Ba'th government only to be cut down by the Republican Guards, supported by helicopter gunships, when the U.S. sat on the sidelines. Fearing chemical attacks, 1.5 million fled to the borders of Turkey and Iran. In 1995, the U.S. backed out at the last minute from a planned "rolling coup" organized by the CIA through the INC. The coup attempt ended in a complete fiasco." [Emphasis added.]

So, rather than selling out the whole Kurdish culture as we've done before, we're now selling them out one at a time. I don't know which is worse.