U.S. Terrorism Laws Cited as Unfair Bar to Some Needy Refugees
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A spokeswoman for the Catholic Church's refugee resettlement programs called on the U.S. government to change how some anti-terrorism laws are applied because they are keeping refugees from Myanmar from being admitted.
Myanmar was called Burma until the ruling military came to power and officially renamed it in 1989. Many people outside Myanmar, including some officials in the U.S. government, persist in calling the country Burma.
At a Feb. 7 hearing of the House International Relations Committee's subcommittees on human rights and on Asia, Anastasia Brown, director of refugee programs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said after 20 years of civil war and instability in the Southeast Asian country, the international community must find a permanent resettlement solution for the 1.5 million Burmese who remain uprooted from their homes.
That number includes about 800,000 people who are displaced from their homes but remain in the country. About 700,000 people are in surrounding countries, with more than 450,000 of them in Thailand.
Brown said she had just returned from visiting the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand, where about 9,000 ethnic Karen refugees from Thailand have lived for at least 10 years.
"I can speak firsthand of people having fled atrocities living in squalor without hope, and of children who do not even dare to have a dream for their future," Brown told the committee members. "Of the hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees only a small number have been offered any durable solution."
She said many of the refugees her group visited have lived in camps or similar settings for as long as 20 years. "Many of the child refugees we met know only the camps and are not afforded the opportunity to extend their educations or live a normal life," Brown added.
One obstacle to the resettlement of Burmese refugees in the United States is a policy which prohibits the admission of people who are considered to have provided "material support" to organizations that fit under broad U.S. definitions of "terrorist organizations" set by the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act.
Brown said that while the idea of excluding people who support actual terrorist organizations is laudable "the language relating to 'material support' is so broad in construction that it could be interpreted to include any individual who provides as little as a glass of water to a person defending them against a repressive regime."
She gave the example of a woman who provided two tins of rice to the resistance army. The woman's husband was then killed, and she was subjected to repeated, systematic rape by members of Myanmar's army. Although the resistance group is not listed among recognized terrorist groups, Brown said that, because the group works against the ruling government, under U.S. law the woman could be excluded from coming to the United States as a refugee.
She asked that the U.S. figure out a way of excluding such refugees from being barred under "material support" statutes.
Brown also asked that the government work to take better care of "unaccompanied refugee minors," who are either orphaned or permanently separated from their families. She estimated the number of such children in Thailand alone at 8,000.
"Abuse and forced marriage can be prevalent in the camp, while those children who leave the camp can become victims of labor and sexual exploitation," she said. "It is vitally important that each child be interviewed to determine what solution is in their best interest, both for short-term care and for durable solutions. These determinations should be conducted by people with child welfare expertise."
For the 2006 fiscal year, the U.S. government set a much higher number of slots for Burmese refugees, specifically to take in the people from camps including Tham Hin, Brown told Catholic News Service. In the last fiscal year, 1,447 Burmese refugees were admitted to the United States. There are 10,000 slots for Burmese refugees this year, she said.
But if problems such as the "material support" bar are not resolved, Brown predicted many of the residents of Tham Hin will be prohibited from coming to the U.S.
The U.S. Catholic Church resettles between 15,000 and 20,000 refugees each year, working through a network of diocesan agencies and parishes.
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