Guatemalan Leader Urges U.S. Amnesty for Refugees

Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo urged President Bush on Thursday to support legislation that would permit more Guatemalan refugees to remain in the United States and reported afterward that Bush responded “very positively.”

At a brief White House session that marked their first meeting, Portillo asked Bush to back a push to give refugees from the long Guatemalan civil war permission to remain here, just as Cuban and Nicaraguan refugees have been given special amnesties. Efforts to expand immigration law to give that right to foreign nationals from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti died last year in Congress.

But advocates of these refugees are continuing their campaign to expand the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, which allowed Cuban and Nicaraguan refugees to remain here.

Portillo told reporters that Bush said his administration “is going to look into this, and is going to look into the possibility of giving its support.”

An administration official who asked not to be identified when discussing White House matters said Bush told Portillo that the immigration law was “something we’ll take a look at.”

Guatemala’s 35-year civil war, which ended in 1996, left more than 200,000 people dead and drove many thousands to flee the country. Tens of thousands of Guatemalans in the U.S. could be affected by the proposed amnesty.

On another issue, Portillo said he was unable to honor Bush’s request that he use his influence to help push along human rights cases pending in Guatemala. This, he said, was not his proper role.

“What is most important is that the executive is not standing in the middle to hinder the judicial process,” he said. “There have been many scars in our country, but we are in a healing process.”

The administration official said Bush did not discuss specific cases with Portillo but urged him to take a “sensitive, positive and tough stance” on human rights.

Members of the military have been widely blamed for the deaths, torture, disappearances and harassment of hundreds of thousands during and since Guatemala’s civil war.

Although activists acknowledge that Portillo’s 18-month-old administration has put a new focus on human rights, they say the judicial system remains weak and many wrongdoers continue to elude justice.

In one controversial case, Portillo has declined to intervene in efforts to try Efrain Rios Montt, a former general who human rights activists say was responsible for widespread killings while serving as president in the early 1980s. A judge recently ordered public prosecutors to begin investigating Rios Montt, who presides over Portillo’s party and is the head of Congress.

Activists also are pushing for action on the unsolved slaying of Barbara Ann Ford in Guatemala City in May. The 62-year-old American nun was trying to help residents in the country’s ravaged northern region. Similarly unsolved is the 1999 slaying of U.S. journalist Larry Lee.

In another key case, a three-judge panel last month convicted three military officers and a priest in the 1998 murder of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi. The 75-year-old bishop was bludgeoned to death at his seminary two days after presenting a report that blamed the military for most of the deaths in the war.

Portillo also met Thursday with U.S. human rights groups at the Guatemalan Embassy.

Craig Powers of Amnesty International, one of the groups that attended the session, said that although it is technically correct that the Guatemalan president should not interfere with the judicial branch, Portillo could nonetheless use his “bully pulpit” to bring pressure on the judiciary to address other human rights cases.

Portillo told reporters that he and Bush also discussed labor reforms, immigration issues and improved trade. He said Bush expressed support for “a holistic fiscal reform” underway in Guatemala.

Portillo’s governing coalition is facing increasing strains over corruption charges, as well as criticism from the country’s business elite stemming from reforms such as a mandated minimum wage increase.