The administration will now lift the geographic and ethnic restrictions for some of these earlier waivers and issue eight new ones for other groups from Myanmar, Tibet and Cuba. It will also expand the waivers so they apply to all members of the group regardless of their location.
Officials also said they would ask Congress for legislation creating an exception for so-called freedom fighters who fought for U.S. causes, including the Cubans who, at the CIA's behest, tried to overthrow Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Waivers will also be issued for members of the Montagnard and Hmong tribes who fought alongside U.S. troops in Laos during the Vietnam War.
Advocates say about 2,300 of the former fighters who had been admitted to United States have not been able to apply for permanent legal resident status, a step to citizenship, because they are afraid that immigration judges will deport them under the broad definitions of terrorist activity.
Administration officials will also give waivers to asylum applicants who supported Tier 3 terrorist groups under duress, but only if the material-support policy is the only obstacle to their asylum claim.
Jennifer Daskal, U.S. advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, pointed out that people coerced to help groups specified by name on the terrorist lists would still have no way of winning refuge in the United States.
U.S. officials "do get some credit for moving in the right direction," she said. "But this still leaves those forced to provide a glass of water to a member of a designated terrorist group or forced into sexual slavery to such a group defined and barred entry to the United States as a 'terrorist' -- a result that makes no sense from a human rights, moral or national-security perspective."
nicole.gaouette@latimes.com
