Southland Not Prepared for Soviet Emigres : Influx to Tax Already Overburdened Services

Refugee resettlement efforts in Southern California are about to be overwhelmed by thousands of Jews and Armenians who are backed up in Italy and the Soviet Union waiting for permission to enter the United States.

“There is just not enough money and services to serve these people in an expeditious way,” said Bruce Whipple, director of the Los Angeles office of the nonprofit International Rescue Committee, which helps find jobs, housing and language training for refugees.

With classes already jammed by formerly illegal immigrants who are seeking to become citizens, newcomers may have to wait for six months before they can study English, he said. Until then, effectively barred from working because they cannot speak the language, many refugees depend on welfare, aid from community groups or the kindness of relatives, most of whom are themselves scraping to get by.

The mushrooming exodus has caught the U.S. government and American relief agencies unprepared, according to social workers, relief officials and congressmen who want the Bush Administration to let in more refugees. The government has offered to allow some of the newcomers into the country under a special status that severely limits benefits available to them, adding to their anxieties.

As the number of refugees coming to Los Angeles from around the world has tripled since 1985--reaching a high of 19,011 in 1988--federal money targeted to help the neediest newcomers to Los Angeles county dropped from $7.1 million in 1985 to $2.8 million last year, said Joan Pinchuk, director of community and senior citizen services for the county.

“We’ve been pleading (for more federal funds) since September,” Pinchuk said. “These people need to learn how things work here. Coming from the Soviet Union, (many) believe they are entitled to government pensions and feel completely satisfied being on welfare. There is no way to convince them otherwise if we can’t put them in acculturation classes.”

Jewish leaders have put the need to fund resettlement efforts for Soviet Jews at the top of their fund-raising appeals for 1989. They said they need the money to house, retrain and find jobs for newcomers while keeping them off welfare during their first months in the country.

‘Wonderful Problem to Have’

“This is a wonderful problem to have, but . . . financially very difficult,” said Wayne Feinstein, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. He said the Jewish Federation Council has increased its fund-raising goal to $53 million this year, contrasted with $48 million in 1986, in order to help cover the costs.

Some of the newcomers do well. “Take my example. Not everybody goes on welfare. I found work right away,” said Alex Fidler, a civil engineer from Odessa who first applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1979 and waited 10 years until he was allowed to go.

He said he spent two months in the Italian town of Ladispoli but sailed through his immigration interview in Rome while others with similar backgrounds were rejected as American officials began to run out of coveted refugee visas.

“Fate was kind to me. We tried to understand the reasons why other people were refused, but it was impossible,” said Fidler, who lives in the San Fernando Valley.

Sponsored by two cousins, Fidler is working as a cabinetmaker, his wife is learning to be a medical assistant, and his son, who was barred from religious education in the Soviet Union, is studying for his bar mitzvah.

“It’s wonderful here,” Fidler said. “I’m ready to kiss the ground.”

Parolee Status

But others are less fortunate, separated from their loved ones by the quirks of the refugee selection process or frustrated by the lack of services available to those who accept the murky status of parolee in order to come into the United States.

Alla Vayntrub and her husband, Boris, were happy when they left the Soviet Union. But they left their joy behind in Ladispoli where their son and his family were refused refugee visas to enter the United States.

“What should I say?” said Alla Vayntrub shortly after moving to Studio City last month. She daubed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I think about the little one (her 2-year-old granddaughter, Milana.) I cannot see anything around me because my heart is over there.”

Vayntrub’s son, Alexander, his wife, Aline, and Milana were rejected when immigration officials found that they would not have faced “a well-founded fear of persecution” had they stayed in the Soviet Union.

The younger Vayntrubs are appealing their case.

“Even though Soviet policy has changed a little bit under Gorbachev, anti-Semitism continues on a wide scale and there is a well-founded fear of persecution for all of them,” said Gregory Makaron, president of the newly formed Assn. of Soviet Jewish Immigrants in Los Angeles.

In the years when fewer Soviets were emigrating, almost all of them who wanted to come to the United States were granted refugee status without question. But the mass emigration of recent months has nearly exhausted the number of American refugee visas, and relief officials say funding more will be a tough political challenge.

Meanwhile, the federal government has offered parole status for those rejected as refugees. Ambartoum Bakhdanyan, newly arrived in Glendale, is a parolee.

No Refugee Benefits

Admitted to the United States under the government’s offer to let in up to 2,000 emigres a month in without refugee benefits, he and his family are barred from immediately seeking citizenship or from taking advantage of federally funded programs that help refugees learn English, get medical care, rent an apartment or find a job.

Bakhdanyan’s sister-in-law rented an apartment for them, and relatives are helping them get by. But his wife, who asked that her name not be used, said they are already in debt to a physician they have no way to pay.

“My husband is sick, and they took him to the doctor and now I have this bill,” she said. “I need a job. I don’t know how to pay it.”

Only a handful of people have come into the United States as parolees so far, but thousands more are expected in the next several months. Los Angeles County officials said they expect most of them to settle locally, joining thousands of Jews and Armenians who have been leaving the Soviet Union since 1987 as a result of an unexpected turnabout in Soviet policy.

The crunch will be even worse this year when the total number leaving the Soviet Union may be 40,000 or more. Many of those hope to join friends or relatives in Southern California, site of the largest Armenian community outside Yerevan, the republic’s capital, and home to more Soviet Jewish emigres than any American city except New York.

The Jewish emigres generally wait for their American papers at transit points in Italy while the Armenians come directly from Moscow, where the waiting time for an interview with American immigrations officers can be as long as one year.

One Jewish leader compared the situation to the days before and during World War II when the American government failed to admit large numbers of refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

“The window of opportunity is open, but none of us knows how long (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev will stay in power. The hard-liners could overthrow him and close that window,” Ben Zion Leuchter, national president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, told members of the Los Angeles Jewish community during a recent visit.

While it is hard enough for officially sanctioned refugees to find their place in America, those who accept the previously little-used parole status find the going even rougher, relief workers said.

Eligible for Welfare

Although they may be eligible for welfare, many parolees do not understand that they are not entitled to other benefits enjoyed by officially sanctioned refugees, said Zabelle Alahydoian, executive director of the Armenian Evangelical Social Service Center.

“They come here, and we look and their passport and we see parolee and we say, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you,’ ” Alahydoian said. “They look at us uncomprehendingly. . . . They say, ‘How can I be different from my neighbor who just came last week and is eligible for all these services and I’m not?’ It’s just really very difficult for them to deal with that.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh announced the parole policy Dec. 9.

Full refugee status included the prospect of citizenship, refugee benefits include funding for transportation to the United States, a limited period of medical care, job training and housing aid, at an estimated cost to the federal government of about $7,000 per person.

“The new wrinkle, the terrible wrinkle, is this denial of refugee status,” said Karl Zukerman, executive vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York.

“We think it is fiscally motivated since only refugees have any cost attached to them. . . . We think that the change of the practice by the American government in the middle of the flow is almost a breach of faith,” Zukerman said.

Worried about demographic trends in Israel and Armenia, some members of both ethnic groups in the United States share an ambivalence about making it easier for their compatriots to come to America.

Despite that, leaders of Jewish and Armenian groups have both appealed for the granting of more refugee visas.

“We’re hoping . . . to see some coming together of the minds,” said Mark Talisman, Washington director of the Council of Jewish Federations. “We don’t want to give the Soviets any impression other than that we are absolutely delighted with the results of their human rights policy because that’s what we’ve been yelling at them about for 50 years.”