"It's hard to imagine a refugee from Iraq more deserving of residence in the United States than Saman Kareem Ahmad. The 38-year-old Kurd lost his family during Saddam Hussein's genocidal chemical attack against his home town of Halabja in 1988; for the last several years, his de facto family has been the U.S. Marine Corps, for which he bravely served as a translator in Fallujah. Driven out of Iraq by death threats in 2006, he was admitted to the United States under a special visa program for translators and granted asylum. He now provides instruction for Marines headed to Iraq from the base in Quantico.
Yet, as recounted by The Post's Karen DeYoung on Sunday, Mr. Ahmad's application for permanent residence in the United States was denied last month by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The pretext was patently absurd: Mr. Ahmad had once served in the militia of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which USCIS officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" because it had fought against the Iraqi government -- the government, that is, of Saddam Hussein.
Left out of the USCIS calculations were the facts that the KDP is one of the few unambiguously pro-American forces in Iraq; that the group does not appear on any U.S. government list of terrorists; and that the KDP's military activities against Saddam were encouraged and materially supported by the United States...."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/26/AR2008032602801.html