The Providence Journal/Brown University Public Affairs Conference explores the impact of immigration-law changes on those seeking asylum.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 28, 2004

BY CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- We can't defend status quo anymore.LAVINIA LIMON

Refugee advocate

For six years, Pich Chhoeun lived in a straw house in a Thai refugee camp with no running water and limited food. His family wasn't allowed to leave the camp.

"We were deprived of making a living," said Chhoeun, 28, an aide to Mayor David N. Cicilline, and a panelist during a discussion on refugee issues last night at Brown University.

Chhoeun's six-year tenure in a refugee camp is not uncommon.

Keynote speaker Lavinia Limon, who is executive director of Immigration and Refugee Services of America, said her organization recently made a startling discovery: of the world's 11.5 million refugees, 7 million have been confined to refugee camps for more than 10 years.

Limon said she believes that policy changes imposed by the United States after 9/11 will make the situation worse.

Yesterday's panel discussion was part of a series sponsored by Brown University and The Providence Journal that is exploring the theme "Homeland Insecurity: The Changing Face of Immigration."

Last night, the panel focused on refugees, who are defined as people who have fled their country for fear of persecution.

The United States takes in a minuscule number of those refugees each year; less than one-half of one percent of the refugee population. After the 9/11 attacks, the number dropped by more than half as the United States adopted stricter immigration policies.

In fiscal year 2002, the United States accepted 27,000 refugees, compared with 68,000 the year before, Limon said. Last year, 28,000 refugees arrived on American soil.

"It sets a standard that signals to the rest of the world that we don't care, so you don't have to care," said Limon, who served as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Clinton administration.

Limon warned that refugees should not become "collateral damage" of the war on terrorism.

The idea of terrorists entering the United States as refugees is ridiculous, she said.

First, they would have to wait in a refugee camp for 10 years. They would undergo interviews by officials from the United Nations and United States immigration. Then, if they happened to be shipped to the United States -- a big "if" -- government officials and charity groups would follow their every move.

"They are met at the airport. We know where they live. We know where they work. We know where their kids go to school. We know where they get their health care. We know everything about them," Limon said. "Terrorists are not going to wait 10 years and play that lottery."

Limn said she doesn't have the solution to the problem.

"But we can't defend status quo anymore," she said.

Chhoeun, who is originally from Cambodia, was 11 when his family arrived in Minnesota. He remembers vividly his years in a refugee camp in Thailand.

"It's too long," he said about the years refugees spend in the camps. "It's supposed to be a place that is temporary. It's a temporary home."

The symposium ends tonight with a performance by Andrei Codrescu. Codrescu, a writer and commentator with National Public Radio, will offer a "poetic" exploration of three decades of thinking and writing about immigration issues, titled "The Terrorist Within: Are All Borders Imaginary?"

The presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green at Brown University.