A Mockery of Refugee Policy in the Making

In 1971 about 8,000 Soviet Jews arrived in Vienna with Israeli visas, and 96% of them actually proceeded to Israel. Last year, after some ups and some downs and some back ups, about 8,000 Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union. But word had gotten out that once you made it to Vienna there was another option. Three-quarters of them chose to come to the United States.

In a world with an estimated 11 million refugees, there is a battle going on for these few thousand bodies. Israel, which is hungry for Jews, feels that these Soviets are cheating when they obtain exit permits by proclaiming their love of Zion and then choose the easy life in the United States. The American government and most American Jews feel that these people shouldn’t be forced to go to Israel. Allowing them free choice, New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal writes, is “a fulfillment of American principle.”

Earlier this year Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked the United States to refuse refugee status to Soviet Jews with Israeli visas. When that idea got a stony response, the Israelis began arranging for Soviet Jews to exit through Romania, where the only option will be: Go Directly to Israel, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect American Visas.

In response, the State Department is asking the Soviets to let Jews get American visas right in Moscow, skipping the whole Israeli visa charade. If that doesn’t work, we may allow Soviet Jews to retain their status as refugees--and thus their right to resettle in the United States--despite a “temporary” stay in Israel.

Freedom of choice about where to live surely is a fundamental American principle. Unfortunately, it’s a principle that is dishonored more often than not in our refugee and immigration policy. In some ways the obsession with Soviet Jews, especially the obsession with making sure that they can come to the United States, mocks our principles more than it honors them. While Israel’s rather brutal effort to recruit Jews against their will deserves no special sympathy, the fact that there is a free and democratic country eager to take these people in ought to count for a lot when we are turning so many others away.

Contrast the situation of Soviet Armenians. They also are getting exit permits in large numbers; 10,000 have come to the United States since last fall. But our embassy in Moscow has suddenly stopped issuing refugee visas, ostensibly because its budget is exhausted. Dozens of Armenians are now stranded in Moscow after quitting their jobs and shutting off their previous lives by the very act of applying to leave.

The State Department believes that most of these Armenians are not entitled to enter the United States as refugees anyway. The law says that to qualify as a refugee you must be motivated by “a well-founded fear of persecution” in your native country. Otherwise you must apply for immigration through normal channels--a lengthy and usually futile procedure. The State Department believes that these Armenians really want to come here for the same reason any sane person would rather live in the United States than in the Soviet Union: a better life. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough.

Although Soviet Jews face specific ethnic and religious oppression that Soviet Armenians do not face, those who come to the United States are by and large not religious, and many of them are not especially ethnic. Their motive is the same mundane but profound one as the Armenians’. Only in this case there is no close examination of their motive. And whatever their motive for leaving the Soviet Union, “a well-founded fear of persecution” cannot be their motive for not wanting to live in Israel.

Then there are the Vietnamese boat people--another tide that is rising again this year. The British government of Hong Kong recently announced that it will isolate future boat people in a former leper colony on a small rock island, will deny them access to any relief agencies and will send almost all of them back to Vietnam. Malaysia has adopted similar measures. Thailand has gone further, pushing boat people back out to sea and letting them drown. (Now it claims to fix the boats first.) Secretary of State George P. Shultz, on his recent visit to Asia, endorsed the idea of sending boat people back to Vietnam. It’s “hard” not to take people in, he said, but “you have to jack yourself up and say you’re just not going to do it.”

The distinction between political and economic motives is false on several levels. The United States assumes political motives in some cases but not in others. Most refugees’ motives are in fact mixed. And why not? Economic and political elements are equal parts of the American dream. In any event, economic motives are no less respectable than political ones. Would you rather be a Vietnamese peasant or a Soviet Jew? A Vietnamese peasant or an Israeli Jew?

We can’t let in everybody, they say, and maybe that’s true, though I think that we could let in a lot more than we do. But with all the people in the world whom nobody wants, why are we fighting over the few whom somebody else wants desperately?