U.S. Aide Sees Options for Soviet Emigres

Bush Administration officials conceded Wednesday that Washington lacks the money to process and resettle all of the Soviet emigres seeking refugee status in the United States, and one of the officials suggested that some might want to go to Israel or return to the Soviet Union.

Jewish applicants who are turned away by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service “can always go to Israel or return to Russia,” said Jewel S. Lafontant, the State Department’s coordinator for refugee affairs.

About 4,200 would-be Soviet emigres, mostly Jewish, currently are languishing in Rome and Vienna because their applications for refugee status have been rejected by the INS. Another 40,000 fleeing Soviet citizens are backed up in the two cities waiting to begin lengthy applications for refugee status, according to U.S. Jewish groups.

Lawmakers blamed the delays on a controversial policy change that stripped Soviet Jews of automatic refugee status last year and instituted case-by-case reviews.

Lafontant’s comments drew criticism from several House members, who charged that U.S. budget constraints and Washington’s improving relations with the Soviet Union might lead the United States to turn its back on Soviet Jews.

“Despite glasnost (openness), the Soviet Union has not exorcised 400 years of anti-Semitism,” said Rep. Bruce A. Morrison (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and international law. “To pass this over lightly in suggesting that they can return home is the kind of attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.”

The exchanges came as the State Department, formally unveiling its proposed refugee policy for the coming year, said it will grant entry to a total of 125,000 refugees.

Within that limit, the department proposes to admit 50,000 Soviet refugees, including Jews and evangelical Christians. But the limit falls far short of the 120,000 Soviet citizens that American Jewish groups believe may apply for refugee status next year.

The Jewish groups, citing the large proportion of Soviet Jews in the projected refugee total, have not criticized the limits. But they have asked that Washington restore “presumptive refugee status” to Soviet Jews who apply for emigration in place of the case-by-case reviews.

But rather than abandon reviews, Administration officials plan to conduct more of them in Moscow instead of in Vienna or Rome to give applicants a reasonable idea of where they stand in the process.