> April 19, 1997
>
> Central Americans Feels Sting of New U.S.
> Immigration Law
>
> --------------------------------------------------
>
>
> By LARRY ROHTER
>
> INTIPUCA, El Salvador -- At the height of the civil war here,
> as the United States was spending billions of dollars to prop up El
> Salvador's military, hundreds of people from this
> small town fled the violence that engulfed their country and made
> their way to Washington. They took jobs at hotels, construction
> sites or as household help for members of the United States
> Congress.
>
> Now, as a result of a new American immigration law that went
> into effect April 1, many of them, like hundreds of thousands of
> other Central Americans who sought refuge in the United States in
> the 1980s, are being told they must return to the land of their
> birth. For poor countries still struggling to recover from civil
> wars, the prospect of suddenly having to accommodate those
> returnees, while having to do without the money they send home, has
> caused consternation.
>
> "This is the worst danger we have faced since the war ended"
> five years ago, said Domitila Velazquez de Blanco, 53. Three of her
> children are among those who ended up in Washington, including a
> daughter she says is a cook and housekeeper for a United States
> senator.
>
> "Everyone here counts on the money their relatives send back
> from the United States, and if they deport all of them, as they say
> they are going to do, we will be left with nothing," she said.
>
> Many of those who fled the conflict here have now lived in the
> United States for up to 15 years, and have children born there. But
> because the United States armed and financed the army whose
> brutality sent them into exile, they were never able to obtain the
> refugee status that Cubans, Vietnamese, Kuwaitis and other
> nationalities have enjoyed at various times. The new law regards
> most of them simply as targets for deportation.
>
> Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua also found themselves pulled
> into the East-West conflict that was played out on battlefields in
> Central America, and are greatly affected by the new measure too.
> But because of the severity of the fighting here and the resulting
> economic devastation it inflicted, El Salvador has the largest
> contingent in the United States, an estimated one million people, at
> least one-third of whom are subject to the new law.
>
> As a result of the refugee outflow, money sent home by
> Salvadorans living abroad is now the largest single source of income
> for this country of 5.8 million people, accounting for 12 percent of
> the gross national product. According to official figures published
> by the Central Reserve Bank, remittances last year totaled more than
> $1.25 billion, a sum larger than El Salvador's combined exports.
>
> "This is a problem that profoundly worries us, and I
> have talked with President Clinton about it on several occasions,"
> President Armando Calderon Sol said in a recent interview at the
> presidential palace in San Salvador when asked about the new law.
> "Mr. Clinton is a man with a high degree of sensitivity to human
> problems, and he has asked us
> to remain calm and understanding and assured us that there will not
> be mass deportations."
>
> Clinton is to meet with the presidents of five Central
> American countries on May 8 and 9 in Costa Rica, and the topic is
> sure to be broached again there. Already, Central American foreign
> ministers have flown to Washington to meet Secretary of State
> Madeleine K. Albright and plead with her to take steps to lessen the
> measure's impact.
>
> On April 10, the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued
> a statement promising a "hold on deportations through September 30"
> for a category of immigrant that applies to many Salvadorans. The
> announcement was being made, the agency said, "because confusion
> about this assurance appears to have arisen in Central America and
> among the U.S. immigrant community."
>
> But in what was interpreted here as an indication that any
> reprieve would be temporary, the statement also cautioned that "this
> does not mean the law, or any of its provisions, has been or will be
> suspended for any specific nation or group of people." The
> immigration service's "enforcement priorities remain the same under
> the new law," the statement also said.
>
> Even before the statement was issued, officials throughout
> Central America had been skeptical of assurances that no systematic
> deportations would take place. As Eduardo Stein, Guatemala's foreign
> minister, said in an interview, "All the indications that we have
> encountered point to the contrary, and that is what alarms us."
>
> Guatemala's civil war came to an end last Dec. 29, after 36
> years of fighting between an American-armed military and leftist
> guerrillas that killed more than 100,000 people and forced
> another million into exile or out of their homes. A peace accord
> brokered by the United Nations requires the Guatemalan Government to
> carry out sweeping agrarian, social and educational reforms, a
> process that is expected to cost more than $2.5 billion.
>
> "We have our hands full," Stein said. "We have serious
> problems of displaced people, refugees in camps in Mexico, and 3,000
> guerrillas who are disarming. If they suddenly send back 65,000
> people from the United States, for us that creates very grave
> concerns."
>
> Unlike the estimated 2.7 million Mexicans who are in the
> United States illegally, many, if not most, Central Americans say
> they are refugees who fled the civil wars that wracked the region
> for a generation. During a conflict that lasted from 1979 until
> 1992, more than 70,000 people were killed in El Salvador, most of
> them by the American-backed army and the death squads it in turn
> supported, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced.
>
> "The war forced many people here to flee to the United
> States," explained Amilcar Morales, 60, who says his household of
> eight people could not survive without the $200 that his brother and
> children in the United States send back each month. "They were
> unjustly accused of being guerrillas when they were not, and they
> had to leave to save their lives."
>
> Once they reached American soil, though, Salvadorans found the
> Reagan administration unwilling to grant them political asylum. To
> continue providing the Salvadoran government and
> military with aid that, at its peak, exceeded $1 billion a year, the
> State Department had to certify to Congress that human rights were
> being respected in El Salvador, and the claims of
> refugees seeking political asylum contradicted that assurance.
>
> Facing deportation as "economic refugees," Salvadoran and
> Guatemalan asylum seekers in 1985 filed a class action suit, winning
> a settlement with the immigration service five years later. That
> agreement allowed them to continue living and working in the United
> States while their claims were being heard, and together with
> legislation passed in 1991 raised hopes among them that, even if
> they were denied asylum, they would eventually qualify for permanent
> residency.
>
> But the new immigration law makes it far more difficult for
> Central American refugees to win such rights. Much of the time they
> have accrued in the United States does not count toward eligibility
> for permanent residency, there is an annual worldwide numerical cap
> of 4,000 on the number of "suspensions of deportation" that can be
> granted, and hardship to immigrants is no longer a consideration.
>
> "When these people should have won asylum, they were denied it
> for all the wrong reasons," said Lisa Reiner, a lawyer who works at
> Central American Legal Assistance, an immigrant rights group in
> Brooklyn. "Now the floor moves again, and they are being told they
> can't even apply for suspension of deportation, which once more
> makes them victims of poorly applied immigration laws."
>
> Many here contend that the United States is merely reaping
> what it sowed, and that it has a moral debt to repay to this
> country. In an editorial, the conservative newspaper Diario de Hoy
> <which is also on the Web-JRR> argued that "it should not be
> forgotten that the problem
> of illegal immigrants derives from the interference of the United
> States in our region."
>
> "It was the horrors of war and bankruptcy that originated this
> exodus," the editorial continued. "If there are a million
> Salvadorans living in the United States, it is a consequences of the
> policies applied" by Republicans and Democrats alike.
>
> In towns like this, the principal concern is with the
> material, rather than moral, consequences of the law. Thanks largely
> to money emigrants have sent back from the United States, this
> highlands town of 16,000 people has several two-story houses,
> private bus service to the provincial capital and other amenities
> not often found in the Salvadoran countryside.
>
> "Every improvement you see here is a result of money that has
> come from the United States," said Lazaro Guardado, 66, who has four
> children living in the Washington area. "People who used to own just
> a little horse now have four-wheel drives, and people who lived in
> little wooden shacks now have houses made of brick, and all because
> of the remittances."
>
> Studies done by Salvadoran sociologists indicate that the
> poorest families are most dependent on money sent from the United
> States. Sitting in front of the wooden hut that is her home,
> Petronilla Ramirez said that without the $130 sent each month by two
> grandchildren working in Virginia, her family would not be able to
> afford school fees for her 14-year-old granddaughter, Digna, and
> would have to cut back significantly on purchases of food.
>
> But the difficulties of those who have come to depend on money
> from the United States would not be the only problem the country
> would confront, said Robert Rivera Campos, an economist at the
> Salvadoran Foundation for Social and Economic Development, a private
> research institute in San Salvador. El Salvador would also have to
> accommodate a 6 percent increase in population almost overnight,
> with all the social strains that implies.
>
> The country already suffers a significant shortage of housing,
> schools, hospitals and jobs, all of which would be worsened by
> large-scale deportations from the United States. "We simply do not
> have the capacity to absorb everyone all at once," Calderon Sol
> said.
>
> The Salvadoran currency, whose exchange rate has held steady
> since the end of the war, would also collapse, diplomats and
> economists here predicted. The United States has pressured Calderon
> Sol to open up the Salvadoran economy, but foreign investment and
> trade have not grown as rapidly as hoped.
>
> "The colon would sink like a stone, the balance-of-payments
> deficit would balloon and inflation would rise quickly, undoing much
> of the effort this country has made to put its house in order," one
> Latin American diplomat here warned. "And the ultimate result,
> obviously, would simply be to encourage more people to immigrate to
> the United States for lack of opportunity here."