Duarte Asks U.S. to Let Aliens Stay : Deportation Would Hurt Salvadoran Economy, He Says

El Salvador’s President Jose Napoleon Duarte has asked President Reagan to bend the new U.S. immigration law to provide temporary refuge for perhaps half a million Salvadorans who have entered this country illegally, a State Department official confirmed Sunday.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Duarte argued in a letter to Reagan that deportation of the illegal immigrants would further cripple the already limping Salvadoran economy because so many Salvadorans working here send money home.

The bulk of the affected immigrants arrived in this country after Jan. 1, 1982, the cutoff date for the amnesty extended to illegal immigrants under the Immigration Reform Act of 1986. The law gives legal status to individuals able to prove that they have lived here continuously since that date, but more recent arrivals face deportation.

Special Status Urged

The official said Duarte’s letter maintained that political conditions in El Salvador do not justify granting the immigrants the status of refugees from persecution, but proposed instead that their deportation be deferred by granting them a special status called “Extended Voluntary Departure,” known in government as EVD. Such status can be granted to citizens of nations where there is disorder, as well as persecution.

El Salvador has been fighting a Marxist-led insurgency for seven years and was hit by an earthquake last October that left 300,000 people homeless. The United States has supported the Duarte government with military aid and advisers.

Duarte’s letter was delivered to Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, about April 15, but the Administration has yet to formulate a response. The existence of the letter was first disclosed in the New York Times on Sunday.

Abrams Favors Idea

The State Department official said Abrams favors the idea while Michael Armacost, undersecretary of state for political affairs, opposes it.

Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland said the department had not developed a position on the question, either. But Gregory J. Leo, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Justice Department subsidiary that enforces immigration law, vigorously criticized any move to apply the EVD formula to Salvadorans.

“We have a strong policy opposing it,” Leo said in a telephone interview. “We don’t make individual policies for each country, and shouldn’t. . . . The trend in immigration law is not to make determinations country by country, but to focus policy on individual cases rather than on nations.”

In the past, Abrams has been a vigorous opponent of proposals to grant political refugee status to Salvadorans, challenging claims that some have raised that they might be killed by government security forces or right-wing death squads.

The government has generally been more generous in granting political refugee status to immigrants from Communist countries than those from other nations. A General Accounting Office study released last fall found that only 4% of Salvadorans who claimed persecution were granted asylum, compared to 80% of Poles who made that claim.

Supreme Court Ruling

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants do not have to prove that they clearly face persecution in their homelands to qualify as political refugees. The Justice Department said the decision would undoubtedly increase the number of applications for political asylum, which numbered 11,000 last year.

“Abrams’ idea is to support EVD, but to change the terms,” the State Department official said. “Instead of granting EVD for political reasons, you grant it as a measure of economic relief, in response to Duarte’s request.

“Opponents of our policy in El Salvador will claim (that granting Duarte’s request) is proof that people can’t return to El Salvador without putting their lives in danger. We don’t agree, and neither does Duarte. But Duarte is willing to accept that stigma to keep those people in the United States.”

Earnings From U.S.

Meanwhile, the official said, “El Salvador is earning about as much from remittances (from Salvadorans in the United States) as it is from coffee,” the country’s traditional export crop.

In his letter to Reagan, Duarte estimated that Salvadorans in the United States were sending home $350 million to $600 million each year, larger sums than the official U.S. aid program.

The number of Salvadorans living illegally in this country is equal to about 10% of the total population of El Salvador, which was estimated at about 5 million in 1985.

Government officials estimate that approximately 350,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans live in Los Angeles, representing the largest population of Salvadorans outside their country. Many of the Central Americans reside near the downtown area, particularly in the neighborhoods surrounding MacArthur Park, by the intersection of 7th and Alvarado streets.

Proposal No Surprise

Duarte’s proposal has come as no surprise to U.S. officials, who have heard it discussed by Salvadorans for several months. Last month, in a letter to Reagan, Duarte raised his concerns about Salvadoran immigration in general terms.

An Administration official, who asked not to be identified, said there was also discussion of arranging EVD status for refugees from Nicaragua’s Marxist regime on the same political grounds that have been extended to illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and Poland.

Bills to defer the deportation of Salvadorans have been introduced in both the House and Senate. An attempt to add a provision to the House bill to block deportations of Nicaraguan immigrants has been killed in a House Judiciary subcommittee.