The fateful voyage of the SS St. Louis still haunts Jewish memory. Turned away from American shores in 1939, the steamship, packed with nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees, was forced to return to Nazi Europe, delivering many of its passengers back to their deaths.
More than half a century after what has come to be known as the “Voyage of the Damned,” the plight of those on the ship remains one of the most compelling arguments that American Jews voice for granting asylum to the world’s refugees.
But now, as a climate of anti-immigration sentiment takes hold across the nation and as Congress weighs sweeping reforms in immigration laws, the case for keeping America’s doors open to those fleeing persecution has begun to fall on a growing number of deaf ears.
“The ire is basically over illegal immigration,” said Martin Wenick, executive vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
“However, the terms become loose and fuzzy. Legal and illegal, refugees and immigrants – it’s all the same to a large segment of the population. They’re not able to distinguish, so refugees get caught up in this mood.”
Indeed, immigration reform legislation pending in the House of Representatives would place a cap on refugee admissions at 50,000 annually, slashing admissions in a typical year by more than half.
The reform legislation seeks to reduce the overall level of legal immigration by about 30 percent, to between 500,000 and 600,000 each year.
In 1995, 110,000 refugees were granted asylum in the United States, including nearly 22,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union. A small number of Jewish refugees also arrived from Iran and various Eastern European nations.
Jewish activists believe that the changes being debated in Congress could constitute the refugee program’s most significant setback to date.
The task of convincing lawmakers to maintain America’s historic role as a place of asylum has taken on an additional imperative as many continue to view the situation in the former Soviet Union with trepidation.
Since 1965, nearly 350,000 Soviet Jews have come to the United States, with more than 70 percent arriving since 1987, according to HIAS. The vast majority of Soviet Jews enter the United States as refugees.
U.S. law now guarantees refugee status to those who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Once here, refugees are entitled to benefits not available to immigrants.
The 1995 total for Soviet Jewish refugee admissions show a decline of about one-third from the previous year, reaching the lowest levels since 1988, according to statistics provided by HIAS.
HIAS attributes the drop-off to a $100 million budget shortfall at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1994, which forced a cutback in the number of interviews it was conducting.
Although HIAS expects the numbers to rebound, 1996 admissions are again expected to fall short of the pace set in the early ’90s.
HIAS, one of 10 voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the U.S. State Department to receive funds to resettle refugees, estimates that as many as 1.4 million Jews remain in the former Soviet Union.
Of those, about 100,000 are in the “pipeline,” waiting to immigrate to the United States.
This pipeline includes Jews who have been interviewed by the INS and found eligible, those who have been found eligible but have not yet been interviewed and those who would be found eligible but have not yet applied for refugee status.
Applicants must have a close relative in the United States – a parent, child, sibling or grandparent – to be eligible for an interview.
Should a cap go into effect, Wenick anticipates that it would take much longer to “clear out the pipeline,” with Jewish refugee admissions declining by about half.
But he does not believe that the long delays would discourage Jews in the former Soviet Union from trying to leave.
“I think people would take their chances,” Wenick said. “They might also seek other options. Some might go to Israel, some might go to Germany, but the vast majority, to be eligible, have to have an immediate relative in the United States. By and large, I think they would hold out to rejoin their family for reunification.”
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Committee has voiced concerns about other proposals that would make it more difficult for refugees to apply for asylum and to prove their claims of persecution.
Concerns about the political future of the former Soviet Union are also clearly influencing Jewish communal thinking about immigration and refugee reform.
“I think that we have a challenge ahead of us to persuade our friends [in Congress] that Soviet Jews are still at risk,” said Diana Aviv, director of the Council of Jewish Federation’s Washington office, which is leading the Jewish community’s coordinated response to immigration reform.
“People seem to think that because elements of democracy have sprung up in different parts of the former Soviet Union that therefore we no longer need to worry about groups that have traditionally and historically been discriminated against,” Aviv said.
Some, such as the AJCommittee, warn about the potential emergence of a “Zhirinovsky-type fascist regime in Russia that would restore many of the worst features of Stalinism.”
Indeed, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose party did well in parliamentary elections in December, kicked off his campaign this week to become president of Russia Elections are scheduled for June.
“It is not inconceivable that an extremist government will take power that will be nationalistic and hostile to minorities in general and Jews in particular,” said Sam Rabinove, legal director of the AJCommittee.
“Certainly anti-Semitism is for real in the former Soviet Union,” he said.
Aware of the potential for an anti-Semitic backlash in the former Soviet Union, Congress in 1990 passed a law relaxing admission standards for historically persecuted groups.
Under the legislation named for its sponsor, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Jews, along with evangelical Christians in the former Soviet Union, only have to show a “credible basis for concern” about the possibility of persecution instead of proving “well-founded fears,” as is the case with other refugees.
The measure also relaxes the standard for many Southeast Asians.
The House is expected to debate the refugee cap when immigration reform comes up for a floor vote in mid-March.
The Senate version of immigration reform – slated to be finalized and voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee later this month – currently contains no cap, though Aviv of the CJF cautions that a cap could be introduced as an amendment on the Senate floor.
For now, Jewish activists remain hopeful that they can help foster bipartisan action to tame the reform legislation, remove the refugee cap and separate the issues of legal and illegal immigration.
The overriding intent, Rabinove said, is to keep “lawful immigrants and refugees from being held hostage to the illegals.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
