Speech #1000002725

Mr. President. the General Accounting Office has given me a final report on a study I requested on April 4. 1985. examining the asylum practices and procedures at the Immigration and Naturalization Service and at the State Department. The object of the study was to try to determine whether applicants for asylum were being fairly treated. regardless of their country of origin. with a particular focus on Central American refugees. A preliminary report provided to me last October appeared to back up my concerns about politicization of the asylum process and at least the appearance of a bias against refugees from Central America. The final report confirms this. After reviewing 1.450 asylum applications and INS files of applicants from El Salvador. Nicaragua. Poland. and Iran. the report concludes that "whether the Refugee Act of 1980 has been implemented as intended and whether past discrimination based on geographical and ideological considerations has been eliminated are uncertain." This is because neither State nor INS generally documents why applications are approved or denied. Nevertheless. the report found that those seeking political asylum from Central American countries have a much lower approval rate from the INS than those from other countries. even when their claims are similar. Aliens who stated on their applications that they were arrested. imprisoned. had their life threatened. or were tortured had much lower approval rates if they were from El Salvador and Nicaragua than if they were from Poland and Iran. For example. those who described torture to support their asylum request had an approval rate of 4 percent in El Salvador cases. 15 percent in Nicaragua. 80 percent in Poland. and 64 percent in Iran. The study also provides evidence that the process is far more controlled by State Department. and thereby subject to political pressures based on foreign policy concerns. in Central American cases. Justice (INS] changed its original decision to agree with the State Department in 100 percent of the Salvadoran cases and 98 percent of the Nicaraguan cases. compared to 78 percent of the Iranian cases. Moreover. the study found that among the files of the four countries of origin examined. only applicants from El Salvador had actually been deported. I am very troubled by the findings and conclusions of this report. It is my strong sense that the statistics revealed by the study raise a presumption of bias against Central American applicants. and that procedures must be implemented promptly to require greater accountability for approval or denial of applications and to allow more effective congressional oversight of this process. I have written Senator KENNEDY. chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy. to urge the subcommittee to review the GAO report and offering to work with him to address the concerns it raises. I ask that the text of the letter to Senator KENNEDY be reprinted at this point in the RECORD. The letter follows: