US Iraq envoy blasts pace of refugee process-paper

Well, he may not be a total sock puppet...

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, warns that nearly 10,000 Iraqi refugees seeking to enter the United States may have to wait as long as two years because of bureaucratic bottlenecks, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

In a bluntly worded State Department cable titled "Iraqi Refugee Processing: Can We Speed It Up?" Crocker said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had only a handful of officers in Jordan to vet the refugees, the Post reported.

Crocker wrote the admission of Iraqi refugees to the United States remained bogged down by "major bottlenecks" resulting from security reviews conducted by the departments of State and Homeland Security, the newspaper said.

Applicants must wait eight to 10 months from the time they are referred to U.S. authorities by the U.N. refugee agency before they set foot in the United States, he said.

"Resettlement takes too long," Crocker wrote.

Via Reuters.