INS MEMO DISCUSSES EXCLUSION OF RWANDANS WHO ENGAGED IN GENOCIDE

While immigration is less likely to be a hot button issue than in the 1996 elections, the various candidates for President of the United States are already addressing the issue. Both leading contenders – Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore – have made it clear that they are not immigration restrictionists.

Bush heavily courted Hispanic voters in his last election for Governor and has been highly critical of anti-immigration forces in the Republican Party. He is continuing on in his attempt to win the loyalty of immigrant voters as evidenced by recent addresses he gave during a campaign swing through California.

Bush criticized Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant measure that is largely credited with costing Republicans the governorship in California for the first time in sixteen years. Bush’s position is starkly in contrast to many members of his party including most of his opponents for President.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has circulated a memorandum to all INS Service Center Directors addressing the fact that there are some individuals still seeking to enter the US who are excludable on the grounds that they participated in genocide. The INS specifically pointed out Rwanda as a recent example of a place where genocide had recently occurred.

"Genocide" is defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act to incorporate the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide definition which states that any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by –

• killing members of the group;
• causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,
• imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and
• forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The INS memo offers background on the Rwandan conflict and provides a summary of "red flags" for immigration officers that will help them identify individuals who participated in atrocities. Some of those are

• if the Rwandan left Rwanda during certain dates when power changed in the country;
• if the Rwandan is vague in describing his or her daily activities during the 1994 period when genocide was occurring
• if the individual admits to membership in the Rwandan Army, the Presidential Guar, the National Police or the Interahamweand Impuzamugambi militias during the genocide period
• if the Rwandan mentions an affiliation with certain political groups
• if the Rwandan has relatives imprisoned, convicted, killed, or sought for involvement with relatives

The memorandum does not mention anything about the recent mass killings in Kosovo where an estimated 25,000 Albanians were murdered by Serbians. However, the definition of Genocide arguably applies in that region as well.

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