Colombians Flee Homeland to Seek Refuge in Miami

In a city that over decades has taken in tens of thousands of desperate refugees, they seem the least likely. Fleeing a democracy, they arrive by commercial jet, with tourist visas. They are educated and have a little money. But they are running for their lives.

“We left two days after getting this,” said Maria Ochoa, unfolding a one-page, typewritten letter that she, her husband and their two teenage daughters brought with them from Colombia. Signed by the People’s Liberation Army--one of three left-wing guerrilla groups terrorizing the country--the note includes the names of the children, demands a cash payment of $20,000 and ends ominously: “We don’t want to have to kill anyone in your family.”

Uncertain when they might return to their homeland, Ochoa--a pseudonym--and her family now live in a rented apartment in west Miami-Dade County, among a growing community of middle-class Colombians who have abandoned relatives, homes and businesses to escape the threat of assassination, kidnapping and extortion.

Estimates that as many as 300,000 Colombians could leave their country this year--most heading for America on tourist visas--have sparked entreaties from south Florida politicians and street demonstrations demanding that U.S. immigration officials offer temporary asylum to fearful refugees.

In a letter to President Clinton, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said that asylum approval rates were “exceptionally low” for Colombians running from what he called “escalating guerrilla violence” and “rampant kidnapping.”

INS figures show that through the first nine months of fiscal 1999, asylum approval rates for Colombians rose to 37%, almost double what they were the previous year.

Still, said Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “there is a fear in the air that permeates [Colombia].” Last week, he argued for a $1.5-billion package of military aid to Colombia over the next three years, saying that conflicts in the 35-year-old war against insurgents there has led to 35,000 deaths and displaced more than 800,000 people.

That fear no longer afflicts just the very rich or the defenseless campesinos of the countryside. As the government of Andres Pastrana struggles to cope with rebel armies, paramilitary groups and narco-terrorists who have pushed the South American nation to the brink of chaos, those who can afford to are leaving.

“We’ve seen at least 2,000 families in the last six months,” said Juan Carlos Zapata, president of Miami’s Colombian American Service Assn. “About 70% are professional people, typically middle class. They arrive with $10,000 to $20,000 in savings. But they go through that pretty fast.”

Among the cities taking in Colombians are New York, Los Angeles, Orlando and Chicago, Zapata said. But Miami remains the primary destination for a majority of those fleeing because many have been here before on vacation or on business. And it is easy to get along here speaking only Spanish.

“Everybody wants to cash out and leave,” said Gabriel Morales, who runs a Miami freight forwarding business that has been hit hard by both the economic and security unrest in Colombia. “The best people are leaving.”

Ochoa, 54, left a beauty salon in a Bogota suburb to an employee. A sister is living in the family home. Both of her daughters are enrolled in public high school here, studying English and thriving. But they miss home.

“We would return if it were safe,” Ochoa said. “But it’s not.”

After a few days in a Miami hotel, Ochoa and her family found a $685-a-month apartment in the same building where several other Colombians have settled. Among their neighbors are two widows whose husbands were killed by what one of the women called the “random violence” that grips the country.

“My husband was killed over a business deal because people can just get away with that sort of thing,” said the 30-year-old widow, Alessandra, who lives here with her mother and two children.

Most Colombians arriving in the U.S. now enter on six-month tourist visas that can be renewed once for another six months. That means, said Zapata, “that the crunch is coming”--when many people will have to decide whether to stay here illegally, or risk going back to Colombia.

State Department officials have said they are not considering offering temporary protected status to Colombians, a change that would allow many to remain legally once their tourist visas expire.

But Miami immigration attorney Wilfredo O. Allen, among others, insists that status is warranted. “I understand the U.S. fears that if TPS is granted, every plane out of Colombia would be filled with people planning to stay.

“But look at conditions in Colombia. The infrastructure is falling apart, there’s a danger of civil war breaking out. These are not economic migrants. Colombia is a very scary place right now.”

In Bogota, the Colombian capital, the U.S. Embassy is so backlogged with requests for tourist visas that applicants must wait at least nine months for an interview.

Even with a visa, however, many cannot afford to leave. Jim McGrath, a senior vice president of the Florida International Bankers Assn., said the civil unrest, coupled with a long-standing recession in Colombia, “has made it hard for people to liquidate their investments. Many want to get out, but they’re going to have to wait.”

The prospects for continued exodus are much better than those for a solution to Colombia’s woes, however.

“I have no confidence in the Pastrana government,” said Ochoa’s husband, a retired European-born businessman who has lived in Colombia for nearly 20 years. He is able to support his family on a pension paid to a U.S. bank, and Maria is using her time in exile to attend a school for manicurists.

But Ochoa’s husband does not expect to return to Colombia soon. “Kidnapping is a national sport there, and we are all targets,” he said. “It is difficult to make plans.”

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Times staff writer Juanita Darling in El Salvador and researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.