Romanians’ Rhapsody : INS Reverses Itself, Lets 3 Stowaways Remain in U. S.

On his first day of freedom after being granted political asylum, Romanian stowaway Pavel Varro took a walk on the beach, kicked up some sand and celebrated his new life in the United States.

“There are no words to express how I feel,” the 29-year-old electrician turned political refugee said Tuesday night, relaxing at the home of his immigration attorney in Marina del Rey.

The U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on Monday reversed itself and allowed Varro and two fellow Romanians--who arrived here in 1991 by hiding inside a ship-borne cargo container--to remain in the country.

Despite the rigors of their three-week ocean odyssey, it was the 11 months spent in detention at a San Pedro motel, waiting for their case to be resolved, that the men were most glad to have behind them.

“For a while I thought we were never going to make it,” said Varro, referring to the mind-numbing boredom he and the others endured at the Sunrise Best Western Motel under the watchful eyes of two security guards hired by the steamship company on whose vessel they had stowed away.

A decades-old U. S. law requires that all stowaways be detained in private facilities at the expense of the shipping company that brings them to this country.

Varro and his friends, Victor Delurintu, 23, and Iosif Popa, 29, were turned over to INS officials upon their arrival here last September after being discovered aboard a cargo vessel en route to Los Angeles from Le Havre, France.

They had managed to sneak aboard the ship and hide inside a cramped steel container piled high with scrap aluminium. They subsisted on water and crackers for four days before surrendering to crew members.

With their rations running low, and with two of them seasick, the men attracted the attention of the crew by tapping on the steel wall of the trailer-size container and shouting for help.

They had figured on only a week’s voyage to New York, and did not realize that the ship was bound instead for the West Coast.

“We waited four days,” Varro recalled Tuesday. “Two of us were pretty seasick. I heard people in the crew speaking German, and I figured they must be OK. I speak a little German and I yelled to them and they let us out.”

After arriving, they immediately applied for political asylum but were turned down, said Gittel Gordon, their lawyer, whose appeal on behalf of the men was upheld by the INS on Monday.

Instead of being sent to jail, as they expected, the men were placed in custody at the motel, where they spent much of their time watching television and honing their limited English skills while pondering their future.

“At first it was like a vacation,” said Varro. But soon, he said, it became “like a cage--but a golden cage.”

Their guards described them as model prisoners.

“I really got to like them,” said Joseph Smith, 38, one of the guards. He said he and the other guard took the three to dinner occasionally, and once even escorted them to Disneyland.

Others also took a liking to the men.

Members of a local Baptist Church have volunteered to help them find jobs. And the owner of a restaurant the stowaways visited occasionally while under detention--himself a European immigrant--has arranged a rent-free apartment for Varro and Delurintu until they can get on their feet. Popa says he has an offer to move in with relatives here.

The INS ruling allows the men to stay in the United States and work. After a year they may apply for permanent residency status, Gordon said.

A self-proclaimed political dissident, Varro said he has no doubt that he and his friends would be endangered if they were forced to return to their native country.

“If you say anything they don’t like, they can beat you, even kill you,” he said. “I just knew I had to leave.”