Send 'Em Back!

By CATHY BOOTH MIAMI

"It's so hypocritical, so mean. What's happened to America?" Mareus Aggee asked from the back of his English class in Miami's Little Haiti. Like the dozen Haitian refugees alongside him, Aggee, 28, was bewildered. President Bush had ordered U.S. Coast Guard cutters to turn back all Haitian boat people at sea, even those fearing retaliation by the island's renegade eight-month- old military regime. "Bush must know these people will be persecuted, even shot at, when they return home. Has he no heart?"

It's not a question Bush likes to hear. Last week, in another classroom in a predominantly white and Republican suburb of Atlanta, a black father stood and asked if America no longer opened its arms to all refugees fleeing oppression. The President reddened and replied in a tone of bottled heat. "It's a very good question," Bush said, "and the answer is this: Yes, the Statue of Liberty still stands, and we still open our arms, under our law, to people that are politically oppressed. I will not . . . open the doors to economic refugees all over the world."

A lot of Americans agree with Bush. More immigrants arrived on these shores in the 1980s than in any other decade in the country's history. Last year alone, the U.S. absorbed 1.8 million foreigners. A majority of Americans, some 55%, want a moratorium on new arrivals, according to a Roper survey. "How many can we absorb in a time of recession and high unemployment?" argues Representative E. Clay Shaw, a Republican supporter of Bush's. "We've got to protect our shores, our people."

Bush seems haunted by Jimmy Carter's experience with the 1980 Mariel boatlift, during which 124,815 Cubans washed up on Florida's shores -- and the Democratic President lost the election. "Mariel definitely left a shadow. Washington has been nervous all year about the Haitian influx," contends Father Richard Ryscavage, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference's Office of Migration and Refugee Services, which provides social and legal services to some 3,500 Haitian refugees.

White House campaign officials insist Bush did not let election-year politics dictate his decision, but Ira Kurzban, lawyer for Miami's Haitian Refugee Center, believes otherwise. "The Haiti policy," he says, "plays to the basest part of the Republican Party, the anti-alien group, the racists, to keep them from crossing over to Ross Perot."

In Miami, the long-standing mecca for both Cuban and Haitian refugees, the locals seem more willing than the average American to accept the newcomers. Some 57% favor giving temporary refuge to the Haitians, according to a recent Mason-Dixon Florida poll. "Much as it strains our resources," says Mayor Xavier Suarez, a Cuban immigrant himself, "we should put both Haitians and Cubans at the top of the list for admission."

The inconsistencies on U.S. immigration policy trouble some Bush officials. One concern is that the latest decision will endanger the long-standing principle of "first asylum," which allows refugees to enter neighboring countries temporarily until a durable solution is found for their plight. Moreover, some officials concede that the distinction between political and economic refugees has lost meaning since the collapse of communism. "If you ask who faces the greatest danger of being killed or arrested as a result of political turmoil, a Cuban or a Haitian, I'd have to pick the Haitian," says a foreign policy aide. Yet all Cuban refugees are welcomed as political refugees -- in part because of Cuban-American influence in Washington -- while most Haitians are turned back.

Only 9,000 of the 36,000 Haitians stopped at sea have been given the right to seek asylum. Few will ultimately be allowed to stay. But the tough new White House interdiction policy has not stopped the flood tide of refugees: since Bush issued his order, more than 2,000 Haitians have left their country in rickety boats.

Bush's proposal that Haitians apply for asylum at the U.S. consulate in Port-au-Prince seems problematic. When refugees were dumped back in the country's capital last week, those who were suspected supporters of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were fingerprinted like common criminals. Tension in the streets is at its highest since soldiers ousted Aristide last September.

At least 20 people have died in shootings since mid-May, but human-rights groups believe the number is more like 100 dead. "What's appalling is that the President has defined the issue of Haiti as one of immigration. He's walked away from the issue of re-establishing democracy in Haiti," complains Bob Pastor, who oversaw the Mariel boatlift during the Carter Administration.

The U.S. last week seized its first vessel for violating the trade embargo, a ship with 90 cases of Barbancourt rum aboard, but there was little evidence that the military regime is hurting. "It's not working in Iraq, and it's not working in Haiti," admitted an Administration official. Senator Connie Mack, a Republican, urged the Administration to concentrate on ousting the junta, but Bush has so far resisted calls to seek United Nations' help or to seek a military solution.

With reporting by Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince and Dan Goodgame/Washington