VANCOUVER - Canada's Immigration minister says the government intends to more than double the number of refugees from Iraq this year.
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley was in Vancouver on Wednesday to announce that Canada will accept between 1,800 and 2,000 Iraqi refugees in 2008.
Last year, Canada accepted about 900 people from the war-torn country.
Finley says that including the Iraqi refugee increase, Canada will hike the Middle East resettlement target to 3,000 people this year for a 54-per-cent jump since 2007.
Each year, 19 countries resettle about 100,000 refugees and from that number Canada annually resettles about 10,000 to 12,000 people from 70 different nationalities.
That means Canada accepts about 10 per cent of all refugees who are resettled globally.
