Placing a Lock on the Borders

By Richard Lacayo

Margaret Randall has spent much of her life traveling. Her journeys as a writer, oral historian and left-wing activist have taken her to Mexico, North Viet Nam, Nicaragua and Cuba. Today she has settled in at the University of New Mexico as a teacher of American and women's studies. But if the Immigration and Naturalization Service has its way, she may have a bit more traveling to do.

In 1966, while living in Mexico and married to a Mexican national, Randall, now 50, relinquished her American citizenship. She says she believed at the time that she needed Mexican citizenship to find work. In January 1984 Randall, by then divorced, returned on a visa to the U.S. and married an American, from whom she is now separated. In October 1985 an INS official in El Paso rejected her application for permanent resident alien status. Ordinarily, Randall would be eligible to remain because her parents and two of her four children are U.S. citizens. But the immigration official decided that she had to leave. The reason: "Her writings go far beyond mere dissent, disagreement with, or criticism of the U.S. or its policies."

Ten months later, when an immigration judge ruled on Randall's case, he also found her excludable. Like Mexican Novelist Carlos Fuentes and Japanese Novelist Kobo Abe, Randall had fallen afoul of the McCarran-Walter Act, a McCarthy-era law best known for its three provisions that bar entry to the U.S. for Communists and subversives, including anyone deemed to have advocated Communist ideas. Although the Government regularly grants waivers, critics say the law is still used to exclude those who merely hold unpopular ideas or who question U.S. foreign policy. Says Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor: "McCarran-Walter creates a terrible temptation for anyone who is in power."

Now that law is under courtroom attack. One front is in the U.S. Supreme Court. It decided last week that it would review the decision of a Washington appellate panel that last March rejected the Government's assertion of a virtually unfettered right to bar several foreign visitors, including Nicaragua's Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez and former Italian General Nino Pasti. In the meantime, Randall remains in the U.S. while preparing to make her case before an immigration appeals board. But in a federal lawsuit she is pressing a separate challenge to McCarran-Walter itself. Her suit has been joined by PEN American Center, a writers' advocacy group, and eight prominent American authors, including Novelists Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Walker and Playwright Arthur Miller.

Among the contentions of Randall's suit: she is already living in the U.S. and thus is entitled to constitutional guarantees of free expression that are normally applicable to all those within U.S. borders. "Even if her writings did advocate the doctrines of world Communism, they would be protected under the First Amendment," contends Randall's attorney, David Cole, of the Center for Constitutional Rights. In any case, Randall denies holding such views. She has, however, written of American policies in scathing terms, once describing the U.S. as the "most powerful enemy humankind has known." But, she maintains, "I have simply written critically of certain U.S. policies and favorably about certain policies of countries that the present Administration looks poorly upon. I criticize things about those countries as well."

Critics charge that experiences like Randall's are part of a Reagan Administration campaign against the importation of ideas. Those complaints have increasingly found their way into federal court. A Washington appeals court two weeks ago reinstated a lawsuit against the FBI by Edward Haase, a writer whose address book, diary and other papers were seized and copied at the Miami airport in 1985 when he returned from a trip to Nicaragua. Faced with litigation, the U.S. Customs Service issued new rules in August to halt such practices. Earlier this month the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case, Meese v. Keene, in which Barry Keene, a California legislator, challenged the Government's 1983 decision to label as "propaganda" three Canadian documentaries, including an Oscar-winning film about nuclear war.

The Reagan Administration is also charged with using McCarran-Walter to keep out critics of its policies. In one highly publicized case, Patricia Lara, a Colombian journalist, was taken into custody, jailed for five days and deported in October. On 60 Minutes last month, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said Lara was expelled because there was evidence that she was a member of the Colombian terrorist group M-19. Lara insists the claims are false, that even some of her nation's highest officials dispute them, and that the real reason for her expulsion was that she has criticized U.S. policies in Latin America.

The Administration vigorously denies charges that it manipulates McCarran- Walter for its own purposes. At a PEN conference in January, Secretary of State George Shultz said of U.S. visa policy that "no denial is ever based on a person's abstract beliefs." INS Spokesman Verne Jervis insists that the number of aliens excluded under the act is very small. "But often they are high-profile cases," he adds. "You only need a few before there is the vague impression that hundreds are being kept out."

How much impact is Randall's case likely to have? The Supreme Court has been reluctant to interfere with the power of Congress and of the President to deal with aliens. Further, a decision in Randall's favor would not necessarily apply to aliens barred from entering the U.S. in the first place. But a favorable ruling might help lay a foundation for further challenges.

With reporting by Anne Constable/Washington and Melissa Ludtke/Boston