How does Jordan manage with the huge influx of Iraqi refugees it is said to have accomodated?

Every time I hear statistics on the number of Iraqi refugees in Jordan - estimated to be 700,000 compared with Jordan's population of 5.6-5.9 million, I wonder how this could be possible. After all, Jordan is not rich. This is how the CIA's World Factbook describes the country:

Jordan is a small Arab country with insufficient supplies of water, oil, and other natural resources. Poverty, unemployment, and inflation are fundamental problems....

According to the World Bank, Jordan (using 2005 statistics) is a lower-middle-income country with a GNI per capita of $2,500.

So how did Jordan absorb an increase in population equal to more than ten percent in less than four years?

The London Guardian, in January reported on the situation in Jordan and quoted one Yusif Agoub, an Iraqi refugee who moved to the capitol, Amman, in 2004 to open the "elegant" Zad al-Kheir: "I am succeeding with the help of our Jordanian brothers, led by His Majesty the King, who make things easy for us. We have a good life here. I would like to go home tomorrow, but it's hard to be optimistic," he was quoted as saying.

According to the Guardian:

The nearby streets in Amman's Umm Udhaina district are a glittering showcase of the wealth that Iraqi exiles like him have brought. The smart new villas and apartment blocks have shady balconies and Filipina maids at work inside.

The few empty plots are for sale or being built on. Iraqi accents dominate in the local mall. Saddam Hussein's daughters and other former Ba'athists keep a low profile. Abdoun, another posh Amman neighbourhood, is now jokingly referred to as Adhamiya - a Sunni area of Baghdad.

"There are some very rich people who stole from Iraq after the war and invested in Jordan," says Rita, who fled Baghdad two years ago with just a small suitcase and counts herself lucky to have a Jordanian residency permit and a job.

According to the Guardian, the Iraqi refugees have driven up housing costs and added to Jordan's already high average unemployment of 14 percent.

Jordanians, not surprisingly, are often resentful. As the Guardian reports:

One Amman taxi driver cursed as a new SUV with Iraqi plates glided past "I'd like to see him drive that in Baghdad." For Ms Aqari[, another Iraqi living in Jordan,] such attitudes are another depressing sign of terribly changed times for Iraqis. "In Saddam's day the Jordanians used to treat us with respect. Now, they are humiliating us too."

Robert Breen, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan, told the Guardian:

"The impression of many Jordanians is that the Iraqis here are all wealthy ... and that they are the cause of the inflation and the rising cost of prices in Jordan."

While the figure 700,000 is generally accepted by the media and human rights organizations as the official number of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, as Breen goes on to say, nobody really knows what the exact numbers are:

"The [Iraqi] population here ... is not easy to define. Those that are here illegally maintain a very shadowy existence," explains Mr. Breen. The UNHCR has officially given refugee status to 700 Iraqis and another 20,000 Iraqis are seeking asylum through UNHCR, but there are no official records on how many Iraqis have entered Jordan - let alone remained there - since 2003.

And so it is (to use a Kurt Vonnegut expression): when it comes to Iraq, we can never seem to get precise information.

One does have to wonder whether there is a hidden agenda here in not having gotten at the actual statistics by now.