New Voice for Refugees

For some time now the Reagan Administration has resisted pleas by members of Congress, the clergy and others to change the policies under which it disposes of the cases of illegal immigrants from El Salvador. Now an important new voice has been added to the chorus.

In a personal letter to President Reagan, El Salvador’s President Jose Napoleon Duarte has asked the U.S. government to be flexible in applying a new immigration law to citizens of El Salvador. Duarte’s letter estimates that more than half a million Salvadorans have fled to the United States since a bloody civil war broke out in their homeland in late 1979. The bulk of them arrived in this country after Jan. 1, 1982, so they do not qualify for legalization under the new law, and remain subject to deportation if caught. Duarte warns, however, that a massive influx of returning refugees would put further stress on a Salvadoran economy already burdened by war and a major earthquake last year.

To deal with these refugees, Duarte proposes the same approach that critics of the Administration have been urging--giving them a status known as extended voluntary departure. A person who is granted this status under U.S. immigration law acknowledges that he is in this country illegally but remains here because of disorder at home. Only when conditions improve must the immigrant leave.

Duarte’s letter has created a split in the Administration. State Department officials who funnel massive amounts of U.S. military and economic aid into El Salvador to help defeat an insurgency argue for assisting Duarte on this issue, too. The Justice Department officials charged with controlling immigration are against making exceptions to the new law.

The irony of this impasse is that the Administration could easily have granted Salvadorans extended-voluntary-departure status under the old law, but held back because if the Administration formally acknowledged that El Salvador was a dangerous place to be, it might have given political ammunition to critics of Reagan’s policies in Central America. Now that their ally is pleading the refugees’ case, Reagan Administration officials must do what they should have done long ago--grant extended-voluntary-departure status to the Salvadoran illegal immigrants .