Speech #1000080322

Mr. Chairman. I urge my colleagues to give approval to H.R. 618 which would suspend the deportation for undocumented immigrants fleeing the violence and chaos tormenting the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Specifically. H.R. 618 would treat equally and humanely two similarly situated national groups seeking to escape the scourges of war. poverty. and persecution emanating from the ideological conflict in Central America. Unfortunately. the Reagan administration has injected the test of ideology into the execution of the Refugee Act of 1980. The Reagan administration has denied 97 percent of Salvadoran asylum requests .and approved 88 percent of the asylum applications tendered by Nicaraguans. This is a pattern and practice of ideological discrimination that is all too familiar to me. Haitian refugees fleeing the brutal kleptocracy of the Duvailers underwent the same rejection as the Salvadorans. They were rejected. imprisoned. and deported as mere economic refugees. a policy apparently mandated because we were too long tolerant of that dictatorship and did not want to complicate our diplomatic relationship with that regime. Mr. Chairman. I believe that when we passed the Refugee Act of 1980. Public Law 96212. we were seeking to implement uniform refugee and asylum policies that would remove racial and ideological discrimination from our law and practice. Regrettably. the Department of State and the Department of Justice have failed to comply with the letter and spirit of Public Law 96212. If you are from Nicaragua. running from a leftist regime. you are almost 30 times more likely to be granted asylum than a Salvadoran who is coming from a land whose government enjoys our support. That is wrong. inhumane. and violative of the intent of the Refugee Act of Mr. Chairman lets end the double standards and pass H.R. 618 temporarily suspending the deportation of the undocumented from both countries. pending completion and review by Congress of a General Accounting Office report on Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees. It is the very least we can and ought to do.