A Matter of Honor

If President George Bush vetoes a measure that would halt the forced repatriation of more than 30,000 Chinese students now living in the United States, his Administration doubtless will defend his action as realistic. In fact, it will be dishonorable.

It also will be pointless, since both the House and Senate passed the bill by margins more than sufficient to override a presidential veto. While the Administration seems to believe that it can deny the implications of last June’s massacre of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in Tian An Men Square and put Sino-American relations back on a business-as-usual footing, Congress harbors no such delusions.

Speaking on the House floor last week, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, author of the bill to allow the Chinese students to remain here after their visas expire in June, was clear on the fate that awaits them if they are forced to return home: “We can be certain,” she said, “that most of these students will be subject to . . . repression.”

In the Administration’s view, this chilling fact must be discounted in the interest of maintaining open Sino-American relations. Privately, its spokesmen also argue that if they are compelled to go home, those among the Chinese students who survive and prosper will constitute a future bloc of pro-American sentiment. Such calculation may be characterized by some as Realpolitik ; others with a clearer eye will see it as moral squalor.

In the Middle Ages, Europe’s churches were places of inviolable sanctuary for the persecuted. As the cathedral of democracy, the United States has provided similar refuge for those courageous enough to act in defense of human rights. Over the past two centuries, this Republic has sheltered Poles victimized by czarist usurpation and Irish Fenians struggling under the yoke of British imperialism, visionary Zionists and Hungarian freedom-fighters, early Korean opponents of Japanese militarism and the first champions of Czechoslovak freedom.

Now, Congress wishes to extend the American people’s protective hand of friendship to young people who have risked their very lives in the cause of Chinese freedom. If the Bush Administration puts its power in the way of that altogether decent gesture, it will incur lasting shame.