May 19, 2008 12:46 PM

60 Minutes Profiles Three Law Firms on Iraqi Asylum Work

Posted by Brian Baxter

Last night's edition of 60 Minutes highlighted the pro bono work of three Am Law 200 firms--Holland & Knight, Mayer Brown, and Proskauer Rose--on behalf of Iraqi refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

The piece largely focused on the efforts of Kirk Johnson, a former employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who is trying to resettle nearly 100,000 Iraqis now marked as "collaborators" for working with U.S. entities.

Johnson recruited the three firms to aid his nonprofit organization, The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, and the firms responded by donating the billable time of more than 150 attorneys to represent Iraqi refugees.

When 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley asked one former translator for the 82nd Airborne Division what he sought from life in America, his response was simple.

"I just wanna live with my son and wife safe in peace with everybody," said the man named Hayder, who lost a leg in a firefight trying to save an American soldier. "This is my only dream."

While Hayder and his family were eventually resettled in Virginia after a three-year wait in Jordan, 60 Minutes reports that out of an estimated 100,000 Iraqis seeking refugee status, only about 5,700 have been taken in by the U.S.

Sweden has taken in 40,000 refugees and it never participated in the war.

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