Salvadorans in Refugee Limbo Face Deadline : Administration considers whether to extend their temporary amnesty beyond June 30. Many have developed roots here and want to stay.

As many as 500,000 Salvadoran refugees are living in legal limbo as the Clinton Administration considers whether to extend their temporary amnesty beyond the June 30 date set by the George Bush Administration.

The refugees, who fled to the United States during the 1980s to escape civil war in El Salvador, are requesting the extension to see whether elections scheduled for March, 1994, will bring peace stable enough for them to return to their homeland.

But the majority of refugees have other reasons to want to stay besides political conditions in El Salvador. Many have developed roots here. Many have started families, and their children are U.S. citizens.

Despite rocky economic times, their relatively poor subsistence and the recent documentation by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission of “appalling” discrimination against them by federal and local governments, many believe they are still better off than they were at home.

BACKGROUND: Estimates of the total number of Salvadorans in the United States are rough, but range from 800,000 to 1 million. As many as 600,000 live in the Los Angeles area, the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) says.

The Washington, D.C., area has an estimated 85,000 Salvadorans, second only to Los Angeles, and is the only area where they make up a majority of the Latino population.

Saul Solorzano, executive director of CARECEN, says the Washington-based organization is leading a national letter campaign to press President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to extend the deportation deadline for 18 months.

In May, 1991, Salvadorans in Washington drew national attention when a riot broke out after a rookie police officer shot and killed a Salvadoran he was trying to arrest for public drinking.

Community leaders blamed the rioting on the pent-up frustration of Salvadorans after years of police abuse and discrimination in housing, training and jobs.

The event led the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to choose Washington as the site for hearings last year. Its report, “Racial and Ethnic Tensions in American Communities,” released in January, provided evidence to support the claims of local discrimination and concluded that problems in Washington were common to other cities.

The report harshly criticized the Washington city government, saying it was most at fault for not devoting sufficient resources to Salvadorans.

But city officials called the report a low blow, saying the commission was influenced by the conservative legacy of the Ronald Reagan years and eager to criticize Washington because its mayor, Sharon Pratt-Kelly, is black and liberal.

CHANGING STATUS: City officials and Salvadoran activist groups agree that much of the job discrimination against Salvadorans stems from their legal limbo in the United States.

A federal law passed in 1986 granted amnesty to those who had arrived in the country by 1982, accounting for about 300,000. The rest have accepted the temporary amnesty granted by the Bush Administration or are here illegally.

Permanent amnesty has been almost impossible to obtain.

During the civil war in El Salvador, the Reagan and Bush administrations sided with the government, and immigration officials were hard-pressed to justify granting asylum to masses fleeing for fear of government persecution.

According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, from June, 1983, to March, 1991, only 1,365 Salvadoran asylum applications were granted out of 57,077 applications, a 2.8% approval rate.

In 1990, the Justice Department revised its regulations and agreed to rehear all cases in which Salvadorans had been denied asylum. It also offered Salvadorans a special 18-month permit to live and work in the United States.

Few applied for asylum, fearing that if denied again, they would be deported, but many relatives “attached” themselves to those who claimed the temporary status, so that perhaps 400,000 may have benefited.

In May, 1992, just before the amnesty provision expired, President Bush extended it to June, 1993, providing additional time for the budding peace accord in El Salvador to be implemented.

OUTLOOK: Unrest in El Salvador’s military, triggered by condemnation of some its high-ranking officers by the U.N. Truth Commission report, has made Salvadorans more reluctant than ever to return. Many come from those areas that rebelled against the military government during the civil war.

“There is still a lot of the violence, gangs and thievery related to armed conflict,” Solorzano said. “There is still terrorizing of civilians by powerful people with connections to the former military. . . . Let’s face it, the country is not ready to absorb that many people.”