See the Difference? No

The Reagan Administration displayed its ideological prejudices when U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III made it easier for illegal immigrants from Nicaragua to remain in this country as refugees while ignoring the similar plight faced by thousands of people from El Salvador.

Meese ordered the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, an agency of the Justice Department, to “encourage” Nicaraguans whose claims for asylum in this country have been denied to reapply. He also ordered INS officials to expedite requests by Nicaraguan refugees for permits that will allow them to work in this country while awaiting decisions on their asylum requests, which can often take years to adjudicate. INS estimates that there are 200,000 Nicaraguan exiles living in the United States, many of them illegally.

Meese based his order on a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court liberalizing the standards that U.S. immigration officials can use in determining who can be granted political asylum. The court ruled that any foreigner who has a “well-founded fear” that he may be persecuted in his homeland should qualify. Previously, INS had given political asylum only to refugees facing a clear probability of persecution.

Meese is playing to President Reagan’s right-wing supporters by suggesting, as his order does, that Nicaraguans face persecution by the Sandinista government in their homeland while Salvadorans face no similar danger from the U.S.-backed government of El Salvador. In fact, both sets of refugees have similar problems at home--raging guerrilla wars that have claimed many noncombatants as victims, and grinding poverty exacerbated by constant warfare. Only sheer hypocrisy, or abysmal stupidity, could lead Meese to make any distinction between these two sets of people.

Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte certainly sees no distinction. Just a few weeks ago he pleaded with Reagan to allow the estimated 500,000 Salvadoran refugees in this country to remain here until the civil war in their homeland subsides. Reagan has yet to reply to Duarte’s request, and the Administration’s silence on the Salvadorans seems even more insensitive and cynical now that Meese has decided to go easy on Nicaraguans.

Rather than trying to create distinctions that don’t exist, Meese should do what the Administration could have done anytime in the last seven years--grant all refugees from war-torn Central America who are found in this country a special immigration status known as extended voluntary departure. That would declare them illegal immigrants but allow them to remain here until the turmoil in their home countries ends. Now that Meese has opened the door, however slightly, to certain Central American refugees, Congress should force him to open it all the way. If it does not, it is likely that the courts will, when attorneys representing Salvadoran refugees challenge the legality of Meese’s distinction with no differences.