Sad Immigration Paradox

The long lines of people seeking immigration applications at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow testify to the Soviet Union’s new readiness to allow its citizens greater freedom of movement, and to the eagerness of so many of them to leave while the political climate allows it. Most of those waiting, however, are destined to be disappointed. Of the 300,000 Soviet citizens who are expected to apply for U.S. entry visas in the coming year, no more than 80,000 will get them.

After years of U.S. pressure, the Soviets have finally dropped many of their barriers to emigration. But the United States at the same time has been forced to erect barriers of its own to control a prospective flood of arrivals. A U.S. diplomat describes the situation as a moral quandary. To those most affected, it is a human calamity.

The majority of Soviet immigrants to be admitted in the coming year will be given refugee status if they have close relatives in the United States and if they are found to be victims of persecution. These persons are eligible for up to $7,000 in resettlement aid. As many as 30,000 more applicants who have relatives in the United States but who aren’t considered by Washington to be facing persecution will be admitted as parolees. They will have permission to live and work in the country, but they won’t be entitled to federal help.

That leaves several hundred thousand more would-be emigrants with no hope of gaining U.S. entry visas. Many of these people are Jews, Armenians, Pentecostals. Most argue that they face abuse or persecution for what they are or for what they believe. On the official level, they say, abuse has diminished but on a social level it is worse because of increasing popular outbursts of ethnic and religious bigotry. In a country that has a dark and bloody history of pogroms and that faces growing outbreaks of intercommunal strife, those fears aren’t to be scorned.

It would be unreasonable to accuse the United States of being uncaring in the matter of Soviet immigration. Accepting 80,000 Soviet citizens in the coming year on top of 50,000 who arrived in the last year speaks for a humane and generous policy. The ceiling on Soviet immigration seems to be strictly cost-dictated. Only so much money is available to cover the expenses of refugee resettlement, and the Soviet Union is only one of a number of countries from which the threatened and the persecuted will be arriving. Equity demands that the needs of other immigrants be considered.

What can be done? U.S. officials say that other Western countries must do their fair share to welcome Soviet emigrants, and within their absorption capacity some others are. Israel actively encourages migration by Soviet Jews, though so far only a small number of those who have been able to leave the Soviet Union have chosen to settle there. The prospect of mass immigration to Israel, however, raises a fresh question of how resettlement would be paid for. Israel has already said it will need hundreds of millions of dollars in help to provide for a wave of Soviet immigration. If the United States has trouble finding money to settle more Soviet refugees here, it seems unlikely it will find the money to settle them in Israel.

The tighter U.S. policy on Soviet immigration is understandable, but it remains disturbing nonetheless. Long years of agitation for freer Soviet emigration have at last paid off, but the budgetary costs of victory are now seen as prohibitive. With luck, perhaps many among the hundreds of thousands of Soviet applicants who can’t get into the United States will find new homes elsewhere. What still has to be asked is why American policy planners failed to adequately consider what would happen if one day the Soviets did as they were bid on emigration. Had there been more forethought and better planning, perhaps the lines at the Moscow Embassy that the U.S. government now points to as a sign of political success wouldn’t also have the discomfiting look of a major moral embarrassment.