Better Deal for Political Refugees

For Central Americans, who make up 80% of those seeking asylum in the United States, Immigration and Naturalization Service policies have often seemed a double standard: Nicaraguans, seeking asylum from the Sandinista regime that was fighting U.S.-backed Contra rebels, were regularly welcomed. But those fleeing violence in U.S.-allied El Salvador and Guatemala, for example, were usually refused sanctuary.

INS officials must currently follow State Department assessments of whether a refugee’s fear of persecution in the home country is “well-founded”. This screening method has sparked charges that the process is too politicized. Indeed, in order for the State Department to acknowledge political persecution and rights abuses under U.S.-supported governments, it must sometimes contradict its own foreign-policy assessments.

The controversy surrounding past U.S. asylum practices was highlighted by the 1986 trial and conviction of U.S. church workers on charges they illegally housed refugees in churches. The defendants, activists in the so-called Sanctuary movement, sought to publicize what they saw as the misguided ideology of American refugee policy.

Critics may be assuaged by newly announced INS methods of determining which petitions should be granted. The effect of the new guidelines could be especially noticeable in Southern California, one of the principal ports of entry for refugees.

The changes will include the appointment of 70-90 investigators who will receive special training in asylum law and on the conditions in refugee-producing countries. The new asylum unit needn’t rely on State Department evaluations of refugees’ fears and instead can use documentation from such organizations as Amnesty International. Also, a refugee no longer will need to prove that he or she has been targeted for persecution. Instead, INS investigators will decide whether a petitioner’s story is plausible, given the patterns of oppression in the home country.

If rigorously embraced, the policy changes will be a laudable step closer not only to world asylum standards but to a realistic system for coping with the burgeoning flood of would-be U.S. immigrants.