What would you tell an Iraqi who asks you if they should uproot their entire family and move to the United States?

That's the question facing us in NEWSWEEK's Baghdad bureau as we explain a new U.S. immigration program aimed at giving safe haven to Iraqis who have risked working with Americans. After years of pleading--often from high-ranking U.S. officials concerned for their interpreters--it will now be easier for Iraqis endangered by their links to Americans to immigrate with their families. The program applies to Iraqis working for the U.S. military, embassy, contractors or media.

Their perils are obvious. NEWSWEEK wrote last year about a married couple who worked for the U.S. embassy and was murdered. The news of the new rules has created a buzz within the media ranks, with translators, drivers, guards and house staff weighing whether to send away for the online application.

The applicants, according to briefings from the embassy, must believe they are in danger because of their link to westerners. It's an easy argument to make for media staff. Translators have been killed and threatened. Most struggle to keep their jobs secret even from family members. They avoid interviewing people who might know, or be able to find out, where they live. Meanwhile, we push them to identify themselves to sources, to list their names on stories in the magazine and on the Web site (for journalistic transparency) or to go with us to press conferences that often televise shots of the attending journalists. We also ask them to give personal information, including addresses, to Iraqi agencies issuing press credentials for media events. Our guards accompany us to interviews and our house staff can be seen coming and going.

While westerners face danger in Iraq, it's so much simpler. If things get dicey, we just leave. Staff, on the other hand, will have to live with their associations forever through whatever political winds could blow in Iraq--pro-Iranian rabble-rousing, the upsurges in anti-Americanism any time Israel strikes a neighbor--in the years to come.

Iraqis have already been fleeing their country but many languish in neighboring states or spend their small fortunes on shady schemes to get to Europe or America. Compared to the several hundred thousands burdening public services in Jordan and Syria each, and the tens of thousands in Sweden (a common destination), the United States has let in a trickle of thousands. George Packer reported the new program might bring in to about 4,000 Iraqis by fall of 2009.

But the new rules posed as much a dilemma as an opportunity for our staff. They asked about their chances of earning a living in America. Some questions: Can a man get a job to support a whole family or will his wife have to work, too? Will their college degrees be recognized? Will their children's schools teach in Arabic? They seemed to weigh the answers against their insecurity in Iraq.

They were healthy questions I was glad to hear. Too often, there's a perception that America's streets are paved with gold or, at least, that the United States offers the kind of wall-to-wall welfare of Saddam's socialist state or nearby Gulf countries, where jobs, health care and university educations are guaranteed.

My western colleagues and I are mainly concerned about the intangibles, the alienation Iraqis might feel in a land that is highly impersonal compared to Baghdad. Americans are private. They don't invite strangers into their homes on chance meetings. And Americans value mobility, flexibility, more than people in this land first settled 8,000 years ago. Many Iraqis, especially those that have stuck it out through the five years of carnage that forced millions into exile, are fiercely loyal to their homes and families. They're also hesitant to start over in a country where they fear they will be treated as second-class citizens, where their degrees won't be recognized and where no one will recognize their tribal names. The heat-inspired Iraqi work rhythms--work in the morning, take a long break in the afternoon, possibly resume in the evening--don't work in the States.

I keep in touch with a few former translators who have left Iraq. One lives in California, training Marines in Iraqi culture and he seems happy. But he is Christian and his mother had lived there for years already. Another lives in Sweden and recently e-mailed me about the lonely walks he takes, despite the large Iraqi community there. Another, a Canadian citizen, has bounced between efforts to start businesses from Montreal to Bulgaria.

Our staff paused some when I told them that, in the standard American immigrant experience, the first generation faces hardship but life is better for their children, who would basically become Americans (and, I joked, might turn around someday and invade Iraq). At the same time, I was wary of my own motives. Was my advice tinged by my desire to keep my staff intact? I told them to reach out to Iraqis they already know living in America for a true picture of what the transition is like, how it compares to living with the dangers of Baghdad.

There are many growing Iraqi or Arab communities in America where a newcomer could feel comfortable and our employees know some who have made it there. Our translators know enough English to work in most jobs (and the refugee status offers English training). Our cook might have the best chance for success. His ambition is simply to cook and he could do that in many an American diner, though I'd miss his roast beef and fine lasagna. Maybe he can leave a few months' worth in the freezer for us to eat after he's gone.