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Patriot Act Waiver Allowing Admission to Stalled Refugees
March 10, 2006WASHINGTON –– Humanitarian agency Church World Service appealed to President Bush today to intercede and instruct the Department of Homeland Security to include a waiver to a provision in the Patriot Act that is barring admission to tens of thousands of families currently stalled in refugee camps around the world.
"U.S. foreign policy and immigration policy are working at cross purposes," said Church World Service Executive Director and CEO Rev. John L. McCullough in a letter delivered to President Bush today. "The fate of thousands of refugees – whom the United States already has committed itself to processing for resettlement– and of hundreds of asylum seekers hangs in the balance through no fault of their own."
"The culprit," he said, "is an extremely broad interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act's material support bar on admission of certain refugees because they contributed 'material support' to terrorist organizations."
The new interpretation under the Patriot Act and the relatively recent Real ID Act has broadened the definition of terrorist groups to include not only groups on the State Department's list of named terrorist organizations, but also unspecified groups of as few as two persons associated directly or indirectly with armed opposition to a sitting government, even brutal regimes the U.S. itself opposes.
There is no consideration for situations in which such aid was given under duress, inadvertently or unknowingly.
Church World Service's McCullough said as a result, "Some 9,500 refugees from Burma who provided material support to pro-democracy movements opposing Burma's repressive regime now find their resettlement to the United States on hold."
McCullough further cited Montagnards, who assisted members of the United States Special Forces in Vietnam, and members of the Northern Alliance who fought with U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, as now being barred admission to the U.S.
"Colombian refugees who were forced to provide food, money or shelter to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to save their lives and those of their family members now find themselves blocked from admission to the United States," he said. "They are being penalized for the very ways in which they were victimized."
Church World Service is urging waivers that would allow resettlement for those refugees who are identified as having provided material assistance under duress, who inadvertently provided material assistance, or who provided an insignificant amount of material assistance, as well as for populations such as Burmese, Colombian, Hmong and Montagnard refugees.
A relief, development and refugee resettlement agency, Church World Service is one of nine voluntary agencies assigned by the Department of State to resettle refugees in the U.S., working through its network of affiliate resettlement agencies nationwide.
CWS warns that if the material support morass isn’t soon resolved, the U.S. will fail to meet its stated commitment to resettle 70,000 refugees in FY 2006.
McCullough further asked Bush to "do all that you can to protect our nation's well-deserved reputation as a compassionate, welcoming nation" to refugees and asylum seekers.
From the global humanitarian agency's headquarters in New York, McCullough later commented, "The United States risks returning many of these refugees to their same threatening environments and in so doing is inadvertently collaborating with the perpetrators – the same forces the U.S. deems enemies of freedom."
According to a Tuesday (March 7) New York Times article, in a letter to homeland security chief Michael Chertoff, New Jersey Republican Representative Christopher H. Smith and Florida Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the newly reauthorized Patriot Act covering refugee criteria should "properly weigh situations in which individuals are acting under duress or are legitimately resisting illegitimate and tyrannical regimes."
Democrat and Republican members of Congress are also calling for a waiver to the "material support" provision for bona fide refugees who are no threat to U.S. national security. Homeland Security and State Department officials have been working on a related resolution for several months but without closure.
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