War on terror leaves refugees in limbo

Posted: 8/18/06

War on terror leaves refugees in limbo

By Peter Sachs

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Advocacy groups are pressuring Congress to take broader action to alleviate the plight of refugees who have been caught in a tangle of new regulations designed to keep terrorists from entering the United States.

Refugee Council USA, which includes numerous faith-based organizations, estimates as many as 20,000 refugees worldwide are being denied asylum in the United States because their activities fall within broad new U.S. definitions of helping terrorist organizations.

Many of the refugees, from countries like Myanmar, Colombia, Liberia and Cuba, live in refugee camps in other countries.

Aid groups say many refugees are innocent victims kept in limbo by provisions of the USA Patriot Act passed in 2001 and especially the Real ID Act of 2005.

Part of the Real ID Act was designed to keep people who had supported terrorist organizations from entering the United States. But the definition used was broad enough also to apply to people in war-torn countries who supplied trivial support to militias and other groups while under threat of injury or death.

In some cases, women have given livestock, water or food to gunmen who have raided their homes and threatened to rape or kill them, said Ralston Deffenbaugh, president of the Baltimore-based Lutheran Im-migration and Refugee Service. That kind of contribution—under duress—is all it takes under America’s new definitions of giving “material support” to a terrorist group.

“The impact of it has been that we are blocking the entry now of people who are themselves victims of persecution,” Deffenbaugh said.

The House has voted to extend for three years economic sanctions against Myanmar, a country ruled by a military dictatorship, and that has produced thousands of refugees.

Some refugees from Myanmar —formerly Burma—may never be able to gain asylum in the United States because they have fought against the dictatorship, Deffenbaugh said.

“Here are people who have risen up against that regime, who have not used terrorist tactics in the normal meaning of the word, but have taken up arms against oppression,” he said.

The supporters of the Real ID Act did not expect the current fallout for refugees, Deffenbaugh said.

“For those of us from the faith-based agencies, (the issue) raises a profoundly moral question,” Deffenbaugh said. “How many innocent victims are we willing to have in this war on terrorism?”

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