WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate has approved legislation admitting up to 500 Iraqi and Afghan translators into the United States a year because their lives are in danger for helping U.S. forces during the wars. Without debate, the Senate late Thursday approved the legislation about three months after the Bush administration came under attack by Democrats for accepting few Iraqi war refugees. Similar legislation is pending in the House of Representatives. "America has a strong obligation to keep faith with the Iraqis and Afghans who have worked so bravely with us and have often paid a terrible price for it," Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement. He and other lawmakers have pushed the U.S. State Department to respond more compassionately to the plight of millions of war refugees. Under the Senate bill, up to 500 special visas could be provided a year for three years to accommodate translators, who Kennedy described as "the eyes and ears of our military" and "now have a target on their back because of their service to our country." The legislation is aimed at easing a nine-year backlog for Iraqi and Afghan translators, of which only 50 are now allowed into the United States annually. The translators represent a small portion of the nearly 4 million Iraqis who have either left their country for Syria, Jordan and other nations or have abandoned their homes amid sectarian violence and are hiding out elsewhere in Iraq. At a Senate hearing in January, two Iraqi nationals, testifying behind a screen to conceal their identities, told of the risks they faced for working for U.S. forces and the difficult path to come to the United States. In 2006, only 202 Iraqis were accepted by the United States, out of its 70,000 refugee slots worldwide. Since the Senate hearing, the State Department said it would try to interview about 7,000 Iraqi refugees this year for possible U.S. resettlement. But human rights experts doubt anywhere near that number will be cleared between now and Sept. 30, when the fiscal year ends. Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican who co-wrote the legislation with Kennedy, said, "Foreign nationals who are willing to risk their lives and those of their family members by supporting our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve recognition."
