The State : Jews Plead for U.S. Visas

Hundreds of Soviet Jews awaiting refugee visas in Italy pleaded with the United States to allow them to immigrate, prompting a U.S. official to suggest they could enter the country as “parolees” instead. Verne Jervis, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said a parolee is “somebody who is allowed to come in . . . at the discretion of the attorney general.” But hundreds of Soviet Jews who went to Italy on their way to the United States charged in two petitions to the Reagan Administration that they are being discriminated against and rejected the parolee status. The State Department has said that all available refugee allocations for Soviet Jews have been given out for the first quarter of fiscal 1989 and that the new requests will be processed beginning in January.