Word: asylum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Several hundred Central Americans arriving last week in the U.S. got a nasty welcome from the Immigration and Naturalization Service: they were promptly incarcerated. Under a new hard-line policy, refugees are detained while awaiting action on their request for political asylum, then deported if rejected by the INS. This time roughly 110 men and women were confined behind barbed wire at a detention center near Bayview, Texas, while about 200 mothers with children were held at a Red Cross shelter in nearby Brownsville...
When they learn that their applications for political asylum in the U.S. are finally about to be dealt with, they trek to a makeshift Immigration and Naturalization Service post at the newly opened Port Isabel Processing Center, 25 miles away. Two weeks ago, angry local officials forced the shutdown of an INS office in Harlingen to rid the town of 500 refugees who have been shoehorned into overcrowded shelters and camps since last year. At Port Isabel, the refugees, clutching their meager possessions, line up to be fingerprinted and questioned by immigration officials -- and then wait some more to find...
...plight of the Central American refugees remains far more acute. Recent court decisions have held that applicants for asylum have to be given work- authorization documents, allowing them to seek immediate employment while the INS scrutinizes their pleas. But to stem a surge of arrivals from Central America, the INS delayed granting work permits until asylum applications could be processed and told the refugees to remain near their point of entry until the paperwork was completed. The new regulations helped turn the Rio Grande Valley into a giant alien way station...
...shattered Afghanistan, the outlook ahead is far grimmer: more war, more bloodshed, more despair. With 1 million dead, 2 million uprooted from their homes and another 5 million claiming temporary asylum in neighboring countries, Afghanistan is bracing for a duel to the death between Najibullah's shaky regime and the U.S.-backed mujahedin rebels. No one knows whether the Soviets will mount cross-border air raids to thwart the rebels' designs, or if Washington intends to keep open its not-so-covert arms pipeline through Pakistan to the rebels. But even if the superpowers bow out entirely, both sides...
...Bonn, Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not take the setback lightly. His Christian Democrats have lost ground in six of the last eight regional elections. "It is a clear warning signal to all of us," he said. Kohl pledged to reassess policies dealing with refugees who seek asylum for economic, rather than political reasons, but warned that expulsion of foreign workers would jeopardize West Germany's standing abroad...