The World - News from Sept. 4, 1988

Officers of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service have cleared in less than a month 815 Soviet applicants--mostly Armenians--for travel to the United States, a senior American diplomat said in Moscow. The diplomat, who declined to be identified, said the immigration service had sent officers to Moscow to meet “an emergency situation” that arose this summer when Armenians arriving in Moscow with Soviet permission to emigrate could not be processed due to a U.S. budget squeeze. He said the presence of the immigration officers in Moscow allowed Soviet applicants for U.S. refugee visas to avoid having to stop midway in Rome or other processing centers.