REFLECTIONS ON REFUGEE POLICY

...Fear of the stranger seems a more common sentiment than compassion...

...The] refugee is an unwanted person...

...they are flexible when it is politically expedient...

...so is the possession of talents, skills, and above all training that is useful in a new setting...

...Moving to a society like one's own is far easier than going to an entirely foreign one...

...A refugee is especially unwanted by officials: his papers are rarely in order, his health is often suspect...

...Generally, it is thought of in terms of domestic affairs (such as pressures to advance civil rights, to legalize abortion, to get prayers back into schools, to provide bilingual education...

...Like Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the United States has recently had to face the prospect of becoming a nation of mass "first asylum," where large numbers of expellees and escapees have tried to land...

...but, of course, pressures have long been exercised by powerful constituencies to affect immigration policy...

...Think, for example, of how, and why, in the recent sessions of Congress, amendment after amendment was tacked on to the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration-reform bill...

...But there is also the pressure of politics, the need to "weigh difficult choices," to keep a weather eye on friends and foes...

...Some of those who recently sought admission to the United States have benefited not only by having gotten out of the right (actually "left") place at the right time, but also because they have had effective lobbyists championing their causes...

...She is usually Vietnamese or Khmer...

...Knowing the language of the new society is a boon...

...Special-interest groups have long been a part of the American political scene...

...in the second, of expressed differences between "victims" (like Poles) and "opportunists" (like Haitians and Salvadorans...

...While there have always been charitable people who welcomed the "weary pilgrims," most often assistance and protection and, especially, admission have been provided on a highly selective basis...

...The first harkens back to earlier campaigns, nativist in name, racist in character, which specified who should be permitted to enter this society and participate in the system...

...Federal authorities and local communities have had to deal with the escalation of people who often define "immediate family" in far broader terms than we do, and with the extra burdens that are created...

...There is the old matter of "undesirable aliens"—and the new one, the "slippery slope...

...In this century, in many countries, the control of borders has become a major policy issue...

...There is increasing pressure to avoid what is sometimes described as the threat of inundation...

...It can be devastating to the seekers of asylum when no humble Samaritan or noble king stands by to assist...

...If xenophobia is so widespread a sentiment one might ask: How is it that any political sojourners have found refuge in other lands...

...There is the humanitarian proclivity, the genuine desire to play the role of Good Samaritan...

...In Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus we are told how Theseus, King of Athens, welcomed the exiled Oedipus to his land saying, Never could I turn away from any stranger such as you are now and leave him to his fate...

...It is a theme that reappears in the New Testament in somewhat different form, often 484 expressed in parables such as that of the Good Samaritan...

...Like other governments, ours too has balked at the prospect of an uncontrolled influx, and so has the public...

...The Thais worry about subversive elements infiltrating their society...

...In modern times, as in ancient ones, it can be a great help to the estranged when others extend a hand of welcome...

...However, the Act did provide refugee status for those who are in that twilight zone—those, like the Haitian boat people, who might be called "economic migrants for political reasons...

...It was this sentiment that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the more comprehensive restrictive legislation of the 1920s...

...The undercurrent of East-West politics remains the most prominent factor enhancing the opportunities of some and inhibiting the access of others...

...If he fails or becomes resentful or unhappy, he is thought to be ungrateful and a burden on the community...

...With the exception of the "1960" Cubans (originally admitted under special dispensations) and the more recent Marielitos, almost all others now designated as refugees have come through other countries, screened as it were through a bureaucratic filter that sought to determine their official admissibility...

...There is one other matter...

...Some have easier times than others...

...486...

...They are products of upheavals within and conflicts between societies...

...They are rigid, he notes, when authorities wish to stick to the letter of the law (as in the case of the controversies over the "I N Sing" of young Khmer...

...Despite the portrait that elicits compassion, to many in receiving societies...

...While allotments for refugee admissions have become considerably more generous in recent years, U.S...

...Cultural factors are critical too...

...Immediate family members seeking to join their relatives have priority...

...Still, while these may be necessary factors for easing adjustment, they are not sufficient...

...That such cases as those of Soviet Jews are just does not gainsay the fact that far fewer voices are being raised to assist the Haitians or the Salvadorans or 485 black South Africans to get out of their repressive societies or to ease their entry into this one...

...Her specific ethnicity is less important than her condition...

...The Judeo-Christian tradition has counterparts in others...

...If the first matter is a throwback to reactionary sentiments of an earlier era, the second has to do with a problem that may be an unintended consequence of liberal policies...

...Many Americans also seem to have their own special worries...

...After all, refugees do not simply appear...

...It is often used to bring to public attention the private sufferings of thousands of human beings caught up in the cross-currents of revolution and war...

...That sentiment, first stated in Leviticus, is repeated three times in Deuteronomy...

...Once a person has gained entry into the United States as a refugee he or she becomes, in the lingo of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a "magnet...

...Rudyard Kipling offered a reasonable sociological explanation for this morally reprehensible tendency...

...Kipling was writing of a phenomenon known in Theseus' day—and in our own—as xenophobia, the fear of the stranger, a far more widely held sentiment than its opposite, philoxenia, the love of the foreigner (which is often translated from the Greek of the New Testament as "hospitality...

...For many years there were laws on our books that blatantly discriminated against the entry of certain categories of would-be petitioners...

...The extensive publicity about Castro's castoffs—including the small but significant group of criminals who infiltrated Miami's underworld and engaged in nefarious activities as far north as Union City, New Jersey, and the South Bronx—has given credence to those who claim that such rogues are typical of what can be expected if anyone who claims persecution is allowed to enter...

...The fact is that, even with a number of significant changes, our refugee policy is still far from free of favor—or politics...

...In the Jewish tradition, there is the admonition to love the stranger as yourself "for we were strangers in the land of Egypt...

...III THIS NATION, which began, in the words of that stirring Thanksgiving cantata, "When a band of exiles moored their barks on the wild New England shore," has not always treated seekers of sanctuary with equanimity or equality...

...A boat person, perhaps, or an escapee from Cambodia...

...In the first instance, one thinks immediately of Jeane Kirkpatrick's dubious distinction between regimes that are "totalitarian" and those that are "authoritarian...

...actions in these realms are still essentially reactions to particular political situations...

...When the two converge, as in the case of saving Vietnam's boat people, policy-makers can be at once pure of heart and politically pragmatic...

...As is often the case, many recently arrived Cubans of spotless character are tarred with that brush...

...As Bruce Grant, author of The Boat People, has explained, this state of dependency means that refugees often share another fate...

...Many who work with refugees point to the Refugee Act of 1980 as a major step forward in dealing with those who have suffered persecution based on their physical attributes, religious beliefs, or political affiliations, or who have "a well-founded fear of persecution" should they return—or be returned—to their homelands...

...They act accordingly...

...The explanation lies in the broader social context...

...He or she makes a claim upon the humanity of others without always having much to give in return...

...In a recent paper, political scientist Norman Zucker addressed himself to some of the problems of recent American immigration policies that seem at once too rigid and too flexible...

...In fact they are dependents—people dependent on others to rescue them from their plight, provide them with assistance to meet immediate needs, and aid them in making some sort of new life in a neighboring land or, later, in a third country...

...Yet there is often a considerable gap between public personalities and private thoughts...

...Many worldly, articulate, highly trained refugees have, by virtue of their apparent ability to function in a new society, misled observers into believing that they are well adjusted to their fate...

...She could well be Chinese, Lao, or Hmong...

...If, after resettlement, a refugee works hard or is lucky and successful, he may be accused of taking the work or the luck or success from someone else...

...Today many of the old restrictions have been lifted, many of the explicit biases modified...

...It is not, however, the only one...

...Yet the historical record shows that far more barriers have been erected to prevent entry than bridges laid down to enhance it...

...When moral sensibilities clash with national, ethnic, or local interests many resort to rhetoric about the nature of political power and the character of those who flee their homelands...

...Worried about the fact that "we are no longer in control of our borders," many fail to distinguish between the truly dispossessed and other newcomers, legal and illegal...

...Not all refugees are saints, but most share certain common characteristics...

...It is deeply felt by many who carry out American policies...

...Those who were socially, religiously, or politically marginal prior to their exile are often better prepared to cope with the ambiguities of life in new lands than those who were totally integrated into their old societies...

...Of late, concerns have been raised not only by traditional advocates of restricted entry but by neonativists of varying background and political persuasion...

...IV EVEN FOR THOSE who do know the difference, there are still countervailing forces among those who control the gates...

...II SACRED TEXTS OF MANY CULTURES indicate how one must deal with the stranger at the gate...

...and many cosmopolites ache as much for home as the emblematic madonna and the displaced peasant...

...Included in the latter category are leaders of some minority communities and the rank and file of various labor unions who worry about favoring the non-American needy while failing to deal effectively with the economic woes of American workers...

...Malaysian authorities worry about large numbers of Sino-Vietnamese who might upset the delicate ethnic balance between the numerically and politically dominant Malays and the economically powerful Chinese...

...The Stranger within my gate He may be true or kind But he does not talk my talk! cannot feel his mind...

...She could also be Afghan, Ethiopian, Haitian, or Palestinian...

...Not all refugees are equally poor, alienated, or unwelcome...

...With silent eloquence she communicates the pathos of being uprooted and afraid...

...and sometimes, although he claims to be fleeing from persecution, he is simply trying to get from a poor, overpopulated country to a rich underpopulated one...

...In recent years the Madonna of the Refugee Camp tends to have an Asian visage...

...Bloc power is an old factor that must be reckoned with...

...This is particularly characteristic of those in the Miami area, in sections of southern Texas and southern California and, to a lesser extent, in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and New York...

...In law they are victims of persecution forced to flee their homelands...

...Given this fact, it is not at all surprising that many acts of assistance are offered not simply, solely, or even mainly because of biblical injunction but for geopolitical reasons, with diplomatic points being scored or debts paid or heavy prices extracted for granting the homeless asylum...