Big jump in Iraqi refugees in US

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/7651225.stm

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The US has accepted nearly 14,000 Iraqi refugees in the last 12 months and will take in another 17,000 in the next year, the State Department has said.

The figure is an eight-fold increase over the previous year, officials said.

The Bush administration has often been criticised for being slow to accept refugees from the violence in Iraq.

The UN estimates that more than four million Iraqis have fled their homes since the US-led invasion of 2003, with many going to Syria and Jordan.

The State Department also said spending on Iraqi refugees had more than doubled to $398m (£224m) in the last year.

"By the end of the US government's fiscal year on September 30, 13,823 Iraqi refugees had arrived for resettlement in the United States, surpassing the target of 12,000," the State Department said in a statement.

It said more than eight times as many Iraqis had been allowed to live in the US compared with the previous year, when 1,608 were admitted.

About one-quarter of the Iraqis who arrived in the US in the last year had chosen to settle in Michigan state, the Associated Press news agency said.