Refugees on Hold and at Risk

Good news for My Thi Huynh came at the end of April. A refugee from Vietnam, the 75-year-old widow had persevered to win approval for her children to come from Ho Chi Minh City to California, and they were finally listed for a flight.

Two weeks later, everything came apart. For reasons never explained, she said, the U.S. government ordered a new round of security checks on her three sons, who survive as street vendors under a Communist government that considers them politically suspect.

Like the Huynhs, tens of thousands of refugee families -- Jews from Islamic Iran, Cubans, Somalis and many others -- are trapped in a labyrinth of security measures put in place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The measures are choking a U.S. refugee program that once set an example for the world, advocates say. The number of refugees allowed to enter the country plummeted by 60% since 2001, from 69,304 to 27,186 last year -- the lowest in 25 years.

President Bush has pledged that America will keep welcoming refugees, and set a goal of up to 70,000 this year. But by the end of June, with only three months left in the 2003 federal fiscal year, fewer than 17,400 refugees had been admitted.

Administration officials say the new security measures are intended to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country by passing as refugees. But they acknowledge that the restrictions are creating a humanitarian quandary.

As defined in U.S. law, refugees are people escaping persecution, or fleeing situations in which they have a “well-founded fear” of persecution for political, religious or other reasons.

Huynh, like most refugees, does not question the need for stricter security. But she feels something has gone awry. “I am very frustrated,” said Huynh, who lives in Rosemead.

Since her husband died a few years ago, she has been without close relatives in this country. The couple came to the United States in 1995 as refugees. Am Van Phan, Huynh’s husband, was an official of the former South Vietnamese government and endured seven years as a political prisoner after the Communist victory, she said.

“Until now, I have not questioned anything. But to wait, and wait, and wait,” Huynh said. “Every night, I pray for them to come, because I am 75 years old and alone.”

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Files Full of Heartbreak

The files of international relief agencies are full of heartbreaking stories. Some people have died waiting. Others grow weary of refugee camps and return to their homelands, only to disappear.

Some have been doubly victimized. The case of a 9-year-old Somali girl haunts Anastasia Brown, director of refugee programs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Three years ago, while waiting in Kenya to come to the United States, the girl and two siblings were raped. The girl, 6 at the time, suffered severe bladder damage.

Repeated efforts to get the U.S. bureaucracy to expedite the case have gone nowhere, Brown said, although United Nations officials classified the case a “Priority One” emergency in April 2001. “The processing is at a standstill and this little girl is still waiting overseas,” she said. “It is very unsafe.”

The family has been unable to obtain adequate medical care for the girl in Kenya, said an adult brother who lives in the United States. “When I heard about it, I didn’t know what to do but cry,” said the brother, who lives in the Northeast and filed to sponsor his family in 1995. He asked that the family not be identified.

Administration officials do not discuss the specifics of pending cases, but State Department and Homeland Security officials say they are trying to turn the situation around.

“We are making a concerted effort to go after the backlog of cases,” said J. Kelly Ryan, a deputy assistant secretary of State who took over the refugee program in February. The State Department has the lead on refugee matters, with immigration authorities at Homeland Security providing support.

Security checks are being streamlined, said Ryan, interviews are being conducted with more refugees and funding has been increased for international refugee agencies. “There is a strong commitment at the White House and the State Department to refugee resettlement,” she added. “I don’t think we are seeing a decline of the program. There was a contraction, because of the security procedures, but there is no philosophical change in the idea that refugees are in need of protection.”

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Efforts Questioned

“Prove it. Show it,” demanded Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), co-chairman of the recently formed Bipartisan Congressional Refugee Caucus. “You can overstate the security issue to the point where it kills the refugee program.”

If the program isn’t dead, it’s badly damaged, said Leonard Glickman, president of the New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which resettles 10% to 15% of the refugees accepted into the United States.

“Our country can’t seem to get its program back on track,” Glickman said. “The first year after Sept. 11, everybody was willing to defer to the [Bush] administration. By the middle of the second year, people had had it. If you want to give the management of the program a grade, it’s a D-minus.”

Many of the new security procedures are shrouded in secrecy, refugee advocates said. Decisions can seem arbitrary because explanations are seldom given. Families are unable to plan for the future.

One of the major bottlenecks has been a requirement to obtain “security advisory opinions” on a greatly expanded number of refugees, said Brown, the Catholic refugee director.

The security opinion involves a check of all federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

“After 9/11 the list of those who required an all-agency check was expanded. It’s basically all men over the age of 16,” Brown said. “There are about 40,000 people on hold due to security checks.”

Family members in the United States sponsoring the refugees must also undergo security checks. Brown said some delays are due to the government not having enough personnel assigned to do background checks. Other advocates say refugees are a low priority among thousands of foreign visitors also being checked. Other complications have been due to technical glitches.

A new computer system for refugee cases was installed this spring in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, said an administration official. But the system had difficulty understanding the structure of Vietnamese names, and as a result it started raising red flags about many people who should not have been considered security threats.

“This problem should shortly be solved,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Officials give varying estimates of how long it takes to conduct background checks. The State Department’s Ryan said there has been an enormous improvement, and that new cases are being turned around in about a month. A Homeland Security official said the goal is to finish checks in 45 to 60 days, but some cases can take nine months to a year. Brown agreed there has been improvement, and said that some cases are now down to 90 days.

Concern for the security of U.S. immigration officials who interview refugees abroad has also led to slowdowns. After Sept. 11, interviewing was suspended at most locations for months. It has now resumed. But some sites, such as the Kakuma refugee camp that houses Somali and Sudanese refugees in Kenya, are lawless and still considered highly dangerous.

The new security measures seem to apply wholesale to refugees from all countries. Some groups who before could count on a sympathetic hearing are finding that’s no longer the case.

Among them are Jews and other religious minorities from Iran. “Common sense ... dictates that non-Muslim religious minorities should not be turned away by the United States and forced to return to Iran’s totalitarian theocracy,” the Refugee Council USA said in a report earlier this year.

Los Angeles businessman Sam Kermanian, a leader of the Iranian American Jewish community, said men under the age of 30 appear to be singled out for denials, precipitating wrenching separations for families. “Young men are basically the economic engines of their families after their arrival here,” Kermanian said. “That is the biggest piece of the tragedy.”

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Helplessness and Guilt

For some family members already in the U.S., the uncertainty of the post-Sept. 11 world has led to feelings of helplessness and guilt.

At a refugee service center in Arlington, Va., three Somali women recently talked about their family members who are refugees waiting to come to America. Somalia was plunged into civil war during the 1990s and remains a land of chaos.

Muna Yusuf, 26, said she works three jobs to send $700 to $1,000 a month to her mother and siblings living under constant threat of deportation in the East African nation of Djibouti. Her father is dead.

Asha Elmi is trying to bring her father and sister from Kenya, where they live in fear of local police who shake down refugees. “Security is appropriate,” said Elmi, a U.S. citizen. “But it shouldn’t be taking this long.... There should be some concern for families.”

Farhia Hassan is trying to bring her 77-year-old father, along with her stepmother and siblings, from Kenya. She knows her father’s case number by heart. Her mother disappeared and is presumed dead.

A permanent U.S. resident, Hassan is seeking to become a citizen. But she wonders if her adopted country will ever recover from the aftershocks of Sept. 11.

“These days, they don’t want to share this great country with other people,” Hassan said. “It seems like it is sealed up. The only thing that you can do is wait and hope.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Fewer refugees welcomed

The number of refugees admitted to the United States has dropped dramatically since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, although President Bush has set a goal of 70,000 a year.

Refugees admitted, 2000-2003*

2000: 73,147

2001: 69,304

2002: 27,186

2003: 17,381**

*Federal fiscal year, Oct.-Sep.

**Estimate through Jun. 30

How countries are affected

Selected countries, refugees admitted in 2001 and 2002

*--* 2001 2002 % change Cuba 2,944 1,925 -35% Russia 4,454 2,100 -53% Iran 6,590 1,525 -77% Liberia 3,429 559 -84% Burma 543 128 -76%

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Sources: International Organization for Migration; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; U.S. State Department