Political Asylum System Under Fire, Faces Revision : Refugees: Fraud, anti-immigrant feeling fuel calls for reform. Some fear legitimate applicants will be denied.

Only two years after its overhaul, the nation’s political asylum process is facing likely legislative revision, staggering beneath an unmanageable workload, fierce bipartisan attacks and the nation’s growing intolerance for new immigrants.

The twin specters of flotillas of prospective asylum-seekers from China and Haiti and foreign terrorists submitting fraudulent asylum claims have intensified scrutiny of a program simultaneously hailed as a time-honored humanitarian imperative and attacked as a porous “back door” for opportunists bent on circumventing immigration law.

The resulting uproar has spawned heated calls for change in Congress, which seems poised to enact a crackdown. The Clinton Administration is expected to unveil a comprehensive reform package as early as this week.

“Our asylum system is sick,” said Rep. Ron Mazzoli, the Kentucky Democrat who is leading the charge to curtail its abuse.

Among the congressional proposals are measures to streamline and speed up the asylum process, reduce appeals, discourage bogus applications and quickly repatriate fraudulent asylum-seekers who arrive in U.S. territory via airplane, boat, in vehicles or on foot.

Fearing that lawmakers may dismantle the asylum system amid trumped-up hysteria about terrorist infiltration and offshore invasions, immigrant advocates are scrambling to safeguard the internationally recognized right of refuge--a principle extolled in the Bible and long embedded in U.S. ideology. Needed reform, advocates argue, must focus on streamlining and expediting the logjammed system, allowing officers to dismiss phony requests quickly without compromising protection for legitimate victims.

“Refugees should not be scapegoated or offered up as sacrifices in a fit of political expediency,” said Arthur C. Helton, a New York attorney who directs the refugee project of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

Asylum advocates dismiss terrorist associations as exaggerated. They note that most suspects in the recent World Trade Center bombing and the shootings at CIA headquarters entered the United States on valid visas, as do millions of tourists, students and others arriving each year.

The divisive debate is surging at a time when refugee populations worldwide are burgeoning and polls show hostility to immigrants on the rise in the United States and Western Europe.

“This is a hot-button issue,” said Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), a chief deputy whip in the House Democratic leadership.

In recent years, record waves of asylum-seekers have battered the system, creating a swelling backlog of 300,000 cases--more than half of them Central Americans, mostly residing in the Los Angeles area--and opening broad avenues for abuse. Chinese and Haitian refugees constitute a small minority of applicants, despite public attention focused on their plight.

Asylum claims have jumped from about 26,000 in 1980 to a record 120,000 projected this year. Most applicants will be consigned to administrative limbo, their cases unlikely to be heard for years.

The crush has overwhelmed the national asylum corps of 150 officers, proportionally much smaller than the comparable staffs of other Western nations also facing influxes of asylum-seekers.

In Southern California, only about one-third of asylum applicants are even scheduled for appointments; most are heaped onto the backlog.

“We’re dedicated to dealing with abusive cases at the expense of being not able to interview the legitimate cases and move them through the system,” said Rosemary Melville, chief of the Los Angeles asylum office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Even asylum’s strongest defenders acknowledge that reform is needed to reduce rampant fraud and relieve the ever-expanding queues. Too many claimants are job-seekers rather than true refugees--by definition, those demonstrating a “well-founded fear of persecution” on account of race, religion, nationality or political opinion.

Most asylum applicants are entitled to work in the United States while their cases drag on.

“I would say the abuse is quite pervasive right now,” said Melville, who also expressed a cautionary note about excessive crackdowns on the system.

Asylum applicants are required to produce evidence of their claims, including their own statements and those of witnesses--backed up with documents, news accounts, photographs and doctors’ examinations attesting to mistreatment or torture. Evaluating the merits takes time. While aiding unscrupulous applicants, the delays in deciding cases also prolong the uncertainty for those with legitimate claims.

Alba Escobar, a former university student in San Salvador who is awaiting the outcome of her asylum claim, says she left her homeland in 1988 and came to Los Angeles after receiving death threats and being followed for months by plainclothes security officers.

“I’m sure that if I go back to El Salvador, I’ll face the danger of being killed,” said Escobar, 27, who says at least eight of her university colleagues disappeared and are presumed dead. “Most of us left El Salvador out of fear for our lives,” she said.

Although the system is frequently criticized as porous, the great majority of asylum-seekers are denied refuge and ordered deported.

To improve the system, most analysts propose streamlined processing and improved management, as well as increasing the number of asylum officers. They also suggest increasing lockup space so authorities can hold job-seekers who are fraudulently seeking asylum upon their arrival at U.S. ports of entry.

Legislation before Congress would provide “expedited exclusion” of undocumented foreigners arriving at airports or other ports of entry unless the applicants can persuade inspectors of substantial fears of persecution. Detractors fear that low-level, poorly trained officers will be given the task of making life-and-death decisions, with no chance for appeal or review.

“It’s like allowing toll collectors to authorize the death penalty,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant lobbying group.

Pending legislation would also reduce appeals and bar asylum claims presented more than 30 days after applicants arrive in the United States. Lawmakers would also like to post additional immigration inspectors at certain foreign airports, thereby preventing unqualified asylum-seekers from boarding U.S.-bound aircraft.

“The system is sinfully gimmicked,” said Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a leading voice on immigration policy.

However, asylum advocates characterize many of the suggestions as Draconian remedies that would bar legitimate appeals and force the repatriation of true refugees. “These proposals are contrary to the basic notion of American fairness,” Sharry said.

The Clinton Administration package is believed to include a form of expedited exclusion for untruthful asylum claimants arriving at airports and at other ports of entry. However, the Administration plan is expected to require that trained asylum officers hear such cases, as well as preserve the right of appeal to immigration judges.

While immigrant representatives struggle to retain hard-won asylum rights, groups seeking to reduce immigration call the clamor for change proof of a widespread public desire to pull up the nation’s welcome mat. Immigration to the United States in the 1980s surpassed the record levels of the early 20th Century, a trend that continues today despite the U.S. economic downturn.

“Asylum is in a shambles,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “We can’t accept everyone who wants to use asylum as a back-door immigration plan.”

Critics dismiss such comments as the fear-mongering that taps into a historical undercurrent of xenophobia that has persisted in the United States--gaining force during economic hard times--despite the nation’s immigrant heritage. In fact, asylum-seekers, although growing in numbers, represent only a fraction of the immigrant influx.

“There’s a lot of straight-up anti-immigrant sentiment generated by people who are intent on closing the doors to all immigrants and refugees,” said Cecelia Munoz, immigration policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. “They’ve created an atmosphere of hysteria.”

The asylum process under attack is the composite of years of legislation, lawsuits and debate aimed at transforming Cold War-era refugee procedures long assailed as notoriously biased: welcoming those from Eastern Europe, Cuba and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain, but dismissing people fleeing brutal U.S.-backed regimes such as those in El Salvador and Guatemala.

A landmark 1990 federal court agreement required that U.S. authorities reconsider asylum applications from about 150,000 Central Americans who alleged that they were denied due consideration, a charge leveled by “sanctuary” advocates during the 1980s.

“For us, the asylum process has never been just,” said Oscar Andrade, a Salvadoran who heads El Rescate, a Los Angeles social services group.

Today, most analysts agree that the revised asylum guidelines that emerged in July, 1990, after a decade of acrimonious litigation and provisional regulation are less politicized and arbitrary than their Cold War-shaped predecessors. The revamped program, experts say, functions in a manner more in line with the spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980, the watershed legislation that for the first time formally enshrined the notion of asylum in U.S. law, based on United Nations guidelines.

But a flawed asylum review process and the sheer number of applicants have undercut improvements.

“We are trying to do it in a neutral and nonpolitical way,” said Gregg A. Beyer, a former U.N. refugee administrator who heads the INS asylum program. “Clearly, something has to be done to streamline and improve the system further.”

Eaton reported from Washington and McDonnell from Los Angeles.

Knocking at the Door

Applications for U.S. political asylum filed with the Immigration and Naturalization Service: YEAR: APPLICATIONS (IN THOUSANDS) 1993: 120* 1992: 103.9 1991: 56.3 1990: 73.6 1989: 101.7 1988: 60.7 1987: 26.1 1986: 18.9 1985: 16.6 1984: 24.3 1983: 26.1 1982: 33.3 1981: 61.6 1980: 26.5 Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

All annual totals refer to fiscal years.

* Projected total.

Totals by State

Here are the states with the most pending INS asylum applications as of Oct. 1, 1992: STATE: APPLICATIONS California: 110,407 Florida: 36,262 New York: 25,414 Virginia: 8,924 Maryland: 7,675 Illinois: 3,823 New Jersey: 3,761 Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service