Mass Immigration of Iraqi/Afghan refugees

Considering that a single Swedish municipality took in more Iraqi refugees that the whole North America, they could have taken in a lot more. (I'm not sure if it still is valid)

The main obstacle may be security, they do a whole lot of background checks IIRC.
 
Europe doesn't seem to have much in the way of immigration laws if a Swedish town is letting refugees flood it....

As for America-bound refugees, in the case of Iraq, I can see all the collaborators fleeing to America when America leaves. (lessons learned from Germany and Korea, if America ever leaves)
 
The main obstacle seems to be the Bush admin's fear of a refugee movement bringing stories of the horrors of the war in Iraq. Perhaps also some exagerrated fears of terrorists infiltrating among immigrants, which some candidates claimed could happen on the Mexico border during periodic bouts of immigrant-bashing.

A simple enough POD would just involved Bush changing his mind, making a public case that taking in refugees was part of the US's duty as a beacon of freedom. Bush, for all his huge faults, has never been anti immigrant.

I'm also curious if there's any POD which would've brought over large numbers of war bridesmarried to GIs, much like in the past from Vietnam, Korea Japan, Germany, or England.
 
If and when such a surge of refugees comes in, I wonder how they'd vote. Immigrants, of course, tend towards the Democrats, but then again, you have some refugee populations like the Vietnamese and Cubans being historically Republican; besides, until 9/11, a good number of Muslim-Americans voted Republican (social conservatism and all).
 
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