Iraqi couple who aided U.S. in limbo in Dallas

After fleeing nation, they wait in Dallas for visas


She was kidnapped.

He was a bombing target.

So many Iraqis wanted to see Hussein Albayati and Raghad al-Muqdady dead, their own relatives began referring to the couple in the past tense, as if their demise were inevitable.

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The two volunteered as translators immediately after U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad in 2003. For four years, they risked everything, including their families' and neighbors' safety, to support America's military mission. They were hunted as traitors by radical militiamen until they fled Iraq and arrived in Dallas last month.

(snip)

Mr. Albayati and Ms. al-Muqdady benefited from a special provision that allows the Pentagon to nominate 50 Iraqis per year for U.S. residency permits. The couple said that they are grateful for the opportunity to escape Iraq's bloody sectarian violence.

But they had no idea their visa applications would take nearly two years to process, and that once they got here, they would have no ability to earn incomes until they completed the time-consuming process of obtaining work permits.

How is in even in the slightest bit acceptable for these people who have been working with us (unlike the government of Iraq) to have to wait 2 years in country to get to the U.S.? With their lives on the line every single day they are still there?

There are no bounds to the incompetence of this administration. Just when you think they can't get any stupider, they pop up with more idiotic crap.