Starting Today, U.S. Welcomes 80,000 Chinese -- Inequitable Immigration Policy Outrages Advocates For Haitians

BOSTON - Only a week after the Supreme Court's ruling that Haitian refugees may be returned forcibly to their country, about 80,000 Chinese students and scholars who were in the United States following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre became automatically eligible for permanent residency today.

The granting of green cards by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to this group of Chinese people comes at precisely the time the Clinton administration has been seeking to tighten immigration controls.

It has triggered both relief and ambivalence in the Chinese community. It has also triggered the frustration of other asylum-seekers.

Immigration specialists, business and academic leaders have hailed the Chinese Student Protection Act as a humanitarian act and an economic boon for the United States.

"This is a gold mine for the U.S. We are getting the best and the brightest of the most populous nation in the world," Adam Green, who heads the immigration-law department at Sullivan & Worcester in Boston, said about the green-card "giveaway."

Green cards allow their holders to be permanent U.S. residents.

But critics, among them some Chinese academics, assail the move as a blanket amnesty that offers immigrant status to many Chinese who cannot prove, and will not be required to prove, a well-founded fear of persecution if they returned to China.

"The flaw in this law is that it protects everybody, regardless of their background or activity," said Bin Bin Ding, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire who said he was a democracy activist in China and plans to apply for residency.

Jian-Li Yang, a graduate student at Harvard University and an executive director of the pro-democracy group Alliance for Democratic China, said he hopes "that the government will do this for all people in similar situations. We don't like any double standards."

Many consider the policy to be the most significant immigration move since 1991, when Irish nationals received a special dispensation of 14,000 permanent visas.

Some advocates for other refugee groups, particularly Haitians, are outraged at what they consider blatant political and class bias in applying the law.

"I am shocked. Clearly, this is an act of injustice for Haitians. It is obviously different rules for different people," said Jean Marc Jean-Baptiste, director of the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Boston, which helps resettle Haitian refugees.

The issue of who will get the sought-after visas has created not only resentment among other asylum-seekers, but also substantial soul-searching inside the Chinese community.

Some Chinese immigrants say they are torn over to what extent the whole group deserves permanent status when many had no direct link to the revolt that led to death and imprisonment of their peers back home.

"There is guilty feeling. But also there is the pressure of real life. You will be forced, I think, to help yourself," said Zhang Yunfei, a computer specialist at Harvard University and student at Boston University who plans to apply for one of the visas.

Under the Chinese Student Protection Act, Chinese nationals who can prove they were in the United States from June 5, 1989, to April 11, 1990, are eligible for permanent residency.

Hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by army troops in Tiananmen Square in the capital of Beijing on June 3 and 4, 1989.

Then-President Bush signed an executive order on April 11, 1990, allowing Chinese nationals to stay on the United States until Jan. 1, 1994, even after their visas expired.

Congress passed the Chinese Student Protection Act in 1992 to allow Chinese dissidents to remain in the United States to avoid political persecution in their homeland.

Ira Mehlman of the Federation of American Immigration Reform said the blanket amnesty is simply unnecessary.

"To say that every Chinese who was here between June 1989 and April 1990 is a de-facto refugee undermines the whole process," Mehlman said. "No doubt, there is a relative handful that might be persecuted were they to return today - and we should be making an effort to find these people."

Some see an inconsistency in Clinton's approach. On the one hand, granting the Chinese nationals blanket immigrant status implies that the United States does not believe they safely can return home. Indeed, President Clinton had the option to affirm before today that Chinese nationals safely can return home, but he did not exercise it.

On the other hand, conferring most-favored-nation trade status on China - as the United States did June 4 - implies that for the most part it is satisfied that China is moving to improve its human-rights record.

Mehlman and others said the green-card giveaway already has invited abuse, as some Chinese - most of them are accomplished professionals or students - falsify documents to show they were in the United States during the window of time that will qualify them for the cards.