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.

By Larry Kaplow

The terrible bombing in northern Baghdad Tuesday, which reportedly killed at least 50 people in a crowded afternoon market, highlights both the ongoing dangers here and the shifting security geography of the capital.

The Hurriyah (Freedom) neighborhood where the bombing happened is a predominantly Shiite area and is the typical target chosen by Al Qaida in Iraq. That Sunni Muslim group, made mainly of Iraqis, apparently aims to fan the fires of civil strife, in effect provoking Shiite militias into retaliatory strikes that will drive more Sunnis to their cause. U.S. officials have cautiously said that Al Qaida in Iraq has been greatly weakened and Iraqi officials have boasted that it is all but finished. But a string of bombings has occurred in Baghdad and other cities since the start of U.S. and Iraqi raids against Al Qaida targets in the northern city of Mosul a couple weeks ago. This was just the biggest death toll – since March, in fact. Al Qaida still maintains the strength for regular strikes.

The capital remains an unstable patchwork of dangers and safe havens - though much better than last year. This morning I came back from an interview in downtown Baghdad via Haifa Street. A year or so ago, that would have been unthinkable as the avenue of boxy, modern apartment buildings had been used off and on as an insurgent staging area.  Today, Haifa Street was safe and looked rather tidy and healthy. The nearby Allawi neighborhood, once crime-infested, was also safely passable if still a collection of dilapidated storefronts and workshops.

A senior U.S. Administration  official briefed reporters today about the situation in Iraq and applied a spin heavier than any I've heard in Baghdad for a long time. True, security is much better in Iraq today than it was several months ago but this official went beyond what even military leaders would claim. In the meeting, held on the usual (but irritating) diplomatic ground rules that he/she not be identified by name, a reporter asked about the Iraqi government's ability to take advantage of the recent "lull in violence." The official jumped on the phrasing.

"This is not a, quote, lull in violence," the official insisted. "It is a steady decline, which one could track, plot on a graf, which I know  [ military spokesman]  Kevin Bergner has and you've probably seen, starting in December 2006 and projecting in virtually a straight, leveled averaged line down to this week in Iraq."

The official didn't stop there: "That's not a lull. That is a continuous decline in every metric of violence. Where spikes have occurred, those spikes have been related to developments on the ground, often to security advances or, in the negative sense, to a particularly spectacular Al Qaeda attacks. But the trend line has been, based on the plots I've seen, unaffected by that. It ain't a lull. It is a progressive decline that is now some 17 months in duration."