TLP's Coalition Letter to the President
On January 12th, in conjunction with the launch of the Center for American Progress plan and the one-night run of George Packer's award-winning play "Betrayed" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, The List Project posted a public letter to President Obama.
We will be soon be adding names of key figures in various fields, including Ambassadors, Generals, and others who support the Guam Option and an expeditious resettlement of Iraqis who are imperiled because they helped the United States.
President Obama on our Iraqi allies:
We must also keep faith with Iraqis who kept faith with us…One tragic outcome of this war is that the Iraqis who stood with America - the interpreters, embassy workers, and subcontractors - are being targeted for assassination…And yet our doors are shut. In April, we admitted exactly one Iraqi refugee - just one!
That is not how we treat our friends. That is not how we take responsibility for our own actions. That is not who we are as Americans.
Keeping this moral obligation is a key part of how we turn the page in Iraq. Because what's at stake is bigger than this war - it's our global leadership. Now is a time to be bold. We must not stay the course or take the conventional path because the other course is unknown. To quote Dr. Brzezinski - we must not allow ourselves to become ‘prisoners of uncertainty.’
September, 2007
Hold the President to his Word!
The List Project's urgent call to action: register your support for the 'Guam Option,' by writing to President-Elect Obama's transition team at change.gov. It only takes a couple minutes! Click here for more details.
What is the Guam Option?
The List Project and the Center for American Project are urging President Obama to order an airlift of eligible U.S. affiliated Iraqis to a third location such as our military base in Guam, for expedited processing. Why?
It's simple: we have a national moral and strategic imperative that cannot be met by the conventional bureaucratic process.
While Congress has signaled its broad bipartisan intent through the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act to help a minimum of 25,000 Iraqi allies through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, only 600 Iraqis were processed in the first year as SIVs. This is unacceptable and our Iraqi allies will not survive such a glacial pace.
We are not recommending a haphazard process: the Departments of State and Homeland Security will still be performing the same interviews and security checks, but in an environment that eliminates most of the bureaucratic obstacles (such as operating in a war zone) that have resulted in such a lengthy and inadequate program.
As the you'll learn on this site and in CAP's plan, we have airlifted refugees to bases such as Guam as recently as 1996 to resettle nearly 7,000 U.S.-affiliated Iraqis in a matter of weeks to America. Doing so keeps the refugees safe while making sure that the America public is also protected at the same time.
By contrast, in the two years that the List Project has been referring names to the bureaucracies, only a couple hundred Iraqis on our List have been resettled. Nearly 2,000 more struggle amidst threats of assassination to navigate a seemingly endless process, in many cases waiting years.
We embrace the words of President Obama from the campaign trail on the need to swiftly resettle our Iraqi allies: "what's at stake is bigger than this war - it's our global leadership. Now is a time to be bold. We must not stay the course or take the conventional path because the other course is unknown.
Key Links
▪ The List Project's coalition letter to President Obama
▪ The Center for American Progress (CAP) Plan (download as pdf)
▪ Learn about past airlifts at TLP's Presidents & Precedents
▪ TLP's Timeline of Key Events
▪ TLP's compendium of Official Statements on the issue
Press Coverage on the Guam Option
▪ "Obama's Guam Option" George Packer, The New Yorker
▪ "Let Them In" Fred Kaplan, Slate