Not that we need to find more things to be ashamed about from the George W. Bush years, but one statistic from Terry Gross’ interview with Deb Amos about her book, Eclipse of the Sunnis, struck me.

There are about 2 million Iraqis who have left the country since the start of the war. After years of inaction, the late senator Ted Kennedy succeeded in passing a law that allowed for a better flow of Iraqis to the US. So there are now about 32,000 Iraqis in the US, and Amos expects that number to double. So in a country of over 300 million people, that was responsible for the war that displaced and endangered many of these refugees, we’ve opened our doors to a group that will make up 0.02 per cent of our population. Sweden, with the population of New York City, has over 100,000 Iraqi refugees (1.1 per cent of its population).

Shameful.