Refugee a Racist Term?

When did this happen? I always thought these were people fleeing and taking refuge from something. Maybe it is the wrong term since the danger of the actual hurricane is over. I guess you could call them disaster or flood refugees though. Or maybe if there was a war in Louisiana then maybe this term was more appropriate. Or loony liberals fleeing to Canada could be called political refugees.

It does sound elitist though to not refer to US citizens as refugees. So all those people fleeing from persecution/wars/famines shouldn't be lumped in with Americans or something. It smacks of the dirty foreigner mindset that the left (and sometimes the right) is guilty of. So this is said:

"It is racist to call American citizens refugees," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

So is is quite all right to call Sudanese, Bosnian Serbs, or Timorese refugees since they aren't American. This is the same attitude that the Liberals when they say the Iraqi people are incapable, too dumb, or aren't worth losing American lives to form their own democratic country. The Right has this attitude about Mexican Immigrants as well.