Trivializing a Human Issue

The question of how the United States should treat people fleeing from the chaos and violence in Central America, a profoundly important human issue, has been trivialized by the debate over whether Los Angeles should declare itself a sanctuary for the refugees.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo this week persuaded a majority of his fellow council members to approve a lengthy resolution that by and large restates existing city policies and positions on the treatment of illegal immigrants. Among other things, Woo’s resolution urges the federal government to provide more financial help to cities like Los Angeles where large numbers of displaced Central Americans live, and praises the humane and longstanding policy of the Los Angeles Police Department to assist local residents without regard to their immigration status.

The phrase that generated controversy is one in which the council resolves that Los Angeles is a City of Sanctuary for refugees fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and other Central American countries. Woo said that the resolution would encourage all city employees to follow the LAPD’s lead and serve residents without asking about citizenship, and discourage them from volunteering information about refugees to U.S. immigration officials. In fact, Woo’s resolution is of no more than symbolic value, and a waste of city time.

That, however, did not stop other local officials from further trivializing the issue. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich prodded his fellow supervisors into approving a resolution that opposed any effort to make any part of the county a sanctuary. The contribution of Harold Ezell, the Western regional commissioner for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, was disturbingly unprofessional. Telling a press conference that national refugee policy was none of the council’s business, Ezell publicly alleged that local sanctuary activists might somehow be linked to alien-smuggling rings that help Salvadorans flee their country for Los Angeles. His “evidence” was a slip of paper listing the names of sanctuary activists in Los Angeles that Ezell claims is being given to would-be refugees in El Salvador.

Ezell, a political appointee with no immigration experience before he was named to his post two years ago, should know by now that if a law-enforcement agency has evidence on a crime like alien smuggling, the matter should be investigated first and made public later. If there is no substance to Ezell’s allegations, he has unfairly maligned innocent people, and his Justice Department superiors should severely reprimand him.

The growing national controversy over sanctuary for Central American refugees could easily be resolved if the Reagan Administration would simply grant such people voluntary-departure status under existing immigration laws. It refuses to do so for silly ideological reasons. But the shrill tone of the Los Angeles debate is hardly likely to push the Administration toward a better policy.