Palestinians Evacuated to U.S. Find All Doors Closed : Gulf War: Kuwait refuses to take them back, and the refugees’ temporary visas will expire next month.

After a month of terror under staccato artillery fire and prowling Iraqi soldiers, Dr. Iyad Alshurafa and his family jumped at the chance to flee Kuwait aboard a U.S. evacuation flight in the early weeks of the Persian Gulf War.

They owed their escape to their youngest child, 7-year-old Nabil, a U.S. citizen who ensured the family a spot on the U.S. “freedom flights” from occupied Kuwait.

The family arrived in America in September, 1990, to a hero’s welcome--a band at the airport; a cheering crowd; reservations at a luxury hotel. It was “the first time I have been in a five-star hotel as refugee,” said Alshurafa, a Palestinian who fled his home five times in 40 years because of war in the Middle East.

But what began as a joyous flight to freedom has become a bitter purgatory for Alshurafa and the hundreds of other Palestinians who fled Kuwait aboard the U.S. evacuation flights. They are forbidden by the Kuwaiti government to return to their homes, but have been unable to secure residency in the United States.

On Dec. 31, the temporary visas that have allowed them to stay in this country will expire, forcing the Palestinians to face the possibility of deportation or disappearance into the murky world of illegal existence.

“We are grateful to the United States. They protected us and we appreciate that,” said Alshurafa, his voice filled with the frustration of living the last year in limbo. “But they must complete this effort and let us live here with our kids. They cannot have brought us here only to say, ‘Sorry, you go back to somewhere, wherever.’ ”

Alshurafa, who is in Washington, D.C., this week lobbying officials to resolve the situation, has lived for the last year in a crowded Torrance apartment with his wife and three children, passing the day talking with other evacuees around the country and occasionally studying for tests he must pass to practice medicine in this country.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that out of the 2,200 people evacuated from Kuwait on the freedom flights, there are probably no more than 550 Palestinians without the proper documents to stay in the country. His family is one of about 100 in the Los Angeles area, which has the largest concentration of Palestinian evacuees in the country.

The others are scattered across the country, in relatives’ homes or cities where they believed jobs could be found. An estimated 60 families settled in Raleigh, N.C., simply because their plane stopped there and they had no other place to go.

The last year has been devastating for Alshurafa and the other evacuees who came hoping they had found a refuge from war.

Alshurafa, a pediatrician who headed the Kuwaiti Occupational Health Assn., has been unable to find work. He had one offer to work as a medical researcher but it was withdrawn after he told his employer he could only work through December.

He has survived on $900 a month in welfare and loans from friends.

A friend, Ahmed Iskandarani, a computer engineer in Kuwait, also has been unable to find work and spends his days cleaning house, taking care of his children and worrying about the future.

“It is very hard for us here,” Askandarani said. “It’s a bad feeling to do nothing, but we have no choice.”

Many of the evacuated Palestinians came from the educated elite of Kuwait--doctors, lawyers and engineers who settled in the country after being displaced by 40 years of war in the Middle East. Although many had lived much of their lives in Kuwait, few were citizens because of the country’s restrictive citizenship policies.

Instead, they held a variety of passports of convenience from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon--documents they needed because no Palestinian state existed. There were also many American citizens among the group--mostly children born during their parents’ studies in the United States.

Alshurafa pointed to his youngest son, Nabil, born during a medical conference in New York City. “This is the American,” he said fondly.

It was through Nabil that the Alshurafa family was given the opportunity to leave Kuwait after the Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi invasion. None of them, except Nabil, would have been able to live in this country under normal circumstances. Nor could Nabil have sponsored them to live here because children must be over 21 to sponsor parents for permanent residency.

But in the rush to evacuate U.S. citizens from Kuwait in the midst of the Iraqi occupation, the American Embassy waived restrictions for immediate family members.

“They didn’t tell us where we were going, just come. ‘We will take care of everything,’ ” said Alshurafa’s wife, Naela.

After arriving in the United States, Alshurafa decided to take his family to Los Angeles, where a close friend lived. They rented an apartment in Torrance, believing that they would return to their life in Kuwait as soon as the war was over. “That’s why we left everything,” Naela Alshurafa said.

But their hopes began to fade several months into the war.

The first blow came when the Kuwaiti government expressed its intention to expel Palestinians and restrict the return of those who fled. Raed Al-Rafai, press attache for the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the decision was made to not only reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign workers, but also to remove the threat of Palestinians, who they believed supported the Iraqi invasion.

“We don’t want to be accused of being inhumane, but there is a certain reality we must face,” Al-Rafai said. “Our security comes first and foremost. Certain ethnic groups in Kuwait were disloyal. They want to go back to the same situation. We cannot.”

The next blow came a few months after the end of the Persian Gulf War, when Alshurafa received a bill from the U.S. government for the cost of the rescue flight and hotel expenses.

“They need money from us?” said Alshurafa, whose bill came to more than $6,900. “I told them we will give back the money when we are back in Kuwait.”

Alshurafa said the realization that they could no longer return to Kuwait, and the hardening tone of the U.S. government, made them realize how precarious their lives had become.

At an August Senate hearing on the Palestinian’s plight in North Carolina, INS Associate Commissioner Jim Puleo informed the refugees that their temporary visas would not be renewed past Dec. 31, except on a case-by-case basis.

Puleo announced that there would be no blanket extension of permanent residency for the evacuees and only those who were U.S. citizens--mostly children--would be able to stay, along with any others who were able to secure residency through other means.

“It is up to you whether you want to leave your child here or not,” Puleo said. “I cannot make that decision for you, nor can I create the laws.”

INS spokesman Duke Austin said the agency has few options in resolving the Palestinians’ plight.

They were “paroled” into the United States on an emergency basis, and now, if they want to stay as permanent residents they must apply through normal channels, either through their work, family relations or political asylum.

If they do nothing, the agency’s only recourse is to begin deportation proceedings, although in some cases no one is sure what country they could be deported to.

“There is no discretion for us to wave a magic wand and make them all immigrants,” Austin said. “That’s the problem with this group. They’re saying: ‘No, no, you make us residents.’ We’re saying: ‘We can’t do that.’ ”

Alshurafa, who has led the fight to resolve the Palestinians’ status, said the INS position ignores the complexities of the Palestinians’ situation. Few have immediate relatives in this country and although many of their children are U.S. citizens, they must be older than 21 to sponsor their parents for permanent residency.

Their temporary work permits have made it difficult for many of the Palestinians to find work. Alshurafa was denied a job after presenting his one-year work authorization. “They just said, ‘sorry,’ ” he said. “No one wants someone for just a few months.”

As for political asylum, their status as displaced people in the Middle East has made their cases complex and uncertain. Technically, they should return to their native countries. But as Palestinians, they have no country to return to.

Albert Mokhiber, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, decried the inability of the U.S. government to find a way to allow the Palestinians to work and keep their families together.

“They have become the domestic casualties of the war,” Mokhiber said. “It’s so senseless to see these people on public assistance when they are all professionals.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has promised to introduce legislation that would grant a blanket amnesty for the evacuated Palestinians--a process that could take months to wend its way through Congress.

As a stop-gap measure, Sens. Terry Sanford (D-N.C.) and Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) have begun circulating a letter in the Senate, urging President Bush to extend the Palestinians’ stay by several years, much as he did for Chinese students after the Tian An Men Square crackdown in China.

Alshurafa said he was confident a solution would eventually be found that will allow the Palestinians to stay in this country.

But he said he was still worried because there are only a few weeks left before the Dec. 31 deadline. Each day he gets dozens of phone calls from evacuees around the country desperate for an answer.

“I feel the White House is sympathetic to us,” he said. “But sympathy does nothing for our families. What is sympathy when we cannot find work, when we could be deported?”