Door to U.S. asylum cracked open for some

The Bush administration on Thursday announced changes in the way it applies war-on-terrorism laws that have been used to prevent thousands of asylum-seekers and refugees from gaining entry to the United States.

The laws deny entry to anyone who has provided terrorist groups with “material support” -- which could mean anything from a bowl of rice to live ammunition -- and also apply to those coerced into providing support. A Colombian woman who was kidnapped, assaulted and forced to give medical care to guerrilla groups at gunpoint is among those whose asylum claims were rejected on material-support grounds, as is a Sri Lankan man who was kidnapped by the Tamil Tigers and paid his own ransom.

The administration has defined three sets of terrorist groups, two of which list organizations by name. But the third set, known as Tier 3, is defined by action and encompasses any group of two or more people, organized or not, that uses any device or weapon to cause injury to person or property.

The material-support provisions and definition of terrorism have been so broadly drawn that groups that fought overseas for U.S. causes have been denied entry. Critics contend that the application of the laws has caused a significant drop in the number of refugee admissions -- 41,277 in fiscal year 2006, down from more than 50,000 in each of the two previous years.

On Thursday, officials from the Departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security announced a series of changes to the material-support policy, including the expanded use of waivers to allow entry to groups that would otherwise be banned.

Paul Rosenzweig, assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said the changes were the result of concern over the “unintended consequences” of the material-support provisions, which are part of the Patriot Act and Real ID Act.

“This has been a learning process,” Rosenzweig said, emphasizing that the changes “will not create any appreciable risk for national security.”

The broad Tier 3 definition of terrorism was essential, he said, for keeping up with the “mutations of terrorism,” as groups change and form faster than the administration can keep them accurately listed.

The administration has issued only three waivers in the past, all for refugees from Myanmar (also known as Burma) who had been living in designated locations overseas. Those waivers were highly specific, detailing the group’s ethnicity and current geographic location, so that members of the same group living elsewhere were not eligible for the same treatment.

The administration will now lift the geographic and ethnic restrictions for some of these earlier waivers and issue eight new ones for other groups from Myanmar, Tibet and Cuba. It will also expand the waivers so they apply to all members of the group regardless of their location.

Officials also said they would ask Congress for legislation creating an exception for so-called freedom fighters who fought for U.S. causes, including the Cubans who, at the CIA’s behest, tried to overthrow Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Waivers will also be issued for members of the Montagnard and Hmong tribes who fought alongside U.S. troops in Laos during the Vietnam War.

Advocates say about 2,300 of the former fighters who had been admitted to United States have not been able to apply for permanent legal resident status, a step to citizenship, because they are afraid that immigration judges will deport them under the broad definitions of terrorist activity.

Administration officials will also give waivers to asylum applicants who supported Tier 3 terrorist groups under duress, but only if the material-support policy is the only obstacle to their asylum claim.

Jennifer Daskal, U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, pointed out that people coerced to help groups specified by name on the terrorist lists would still have no way of winning refuge in the United States.

U.S. officials “do get some credit for moving in the right direction,” she said. “But this still leaves those forced to provide a glass of water to a member of a designated terrorist group or forced into sexual slavery to such a group defined and barred entry to the United States as a ‘terrorist’ -- a result that makes no sense from a human rights, moral or national-security perspective.”

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com