THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9406170578
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940617 LENGTH: KINGSTON, JAMAICA
The 31 men, three women and one infant girl are the first beneficiaries of a new Clinton administration policy that allows fleeing Haitians to plead for admission to the U.S. - and get it if they can convince American officials they were running from repression by Haiti's military rulers.
{REST} The Haitians were picked up at sea on Wednesday and brought overnight on a Coast Guard cutter to the Navy hospital ship Comfort, anchored just outside Kingston harbor. They spent Thursday being interviewed by U.S. and United Nations officials and then pleading their cases to U.S. immigration authorities. Some - it was unclear how many - completed the process Thursday night, and any who qualified as refugees were to be flown this morning to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
``It is a difficult exercise, but it is something that is workable,'' Kofi Asomari, a special envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters after watching the initial stages of processing.
The 35 people taken aboard the Comfort on Thursday are the first trickle in what authorities suspect soon could become a flood of refugees. Some officials fear that thousands of Haitians are ready to take to homemade boats once they get word that the Americans waiting to intercept them at sea will grant them hearings rather than return them home automatically.
The U.S. has put no formal cap on how many Haitians it will accept. Federal law permits the admission of just 4,000 refugees from all of Latin America this year. While only about 1,700 of those places were still unfilled at the end of April, a State Department official said the ceiling can be adjusted upward by 3,000 or more.
Asomari said the U.N. commissioner would prefer to see a safe haven given to all fleeing Haitians, whether in the United States or in some other country. Those who flee are branded as criminals by Haiti's ruling junta and may face reprisals if returned, the U.N. fears.
Ron Tomalis, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman who visited the ship before the Haitians came aboard, told reporters that refugee status will be granted to those who can satisfy Immigration and Naturalization Service lawyers that they are fleeing because of repression based on race, nationality, religion, membership in political or social groups, or their political beliefs.
``Our officials are trained to look for certain things,'' Tomalis said, refusing to go into detail on how the Haitians' claims will be evaluated. He said the United States has assembled a database of known incidents of repression in the island country that will help in judging the cases of refugees who claim to have been victims in those incidents.
Tomalis and other spokesmen described a five-step screening process, beginning with a brief medical check and the issuing to each refugee of a hospital-style bracelet with his or her vital statistics and other background information. Representatives of the U.N. high commissioner then brief the Haitians on the requirements for classification as refugees and counsel them in preparation for personal interviews by U.S. immigration officers.
Those one-on-one interviews produce a recommendation for each case that is reviewed by an INS ``quality assurance officer,'' a lawyer who makes the final decision. Haitians who are cleared then go to a medical ward for more complete tests, including tuberculosis and AIDS screenings.
The Comfort's 500-member medical complement for the mission includes 47 doctors, nurses, hospital corpsmen and other support personnel from the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.
Tomalis said refugees who test positive for the AIDS virus, other sexually transmitted diseases or TB can be admitted to the U.S. only with the permission of Attorney General Janet Reno.
{KEYWORDS} HAITI REFUGEE
by CNB