February 14-2014
The Obama Administration is making it easier for people with limited contacts to terror groups to receive refugee status or asylum in the United States.
This will likely help some Iranians who had limited involvement with the Mojahedin-e Khalq in past years, but it probably won’t do anything for the 3,200 Mojahedin members still in Iraq because they are full-time members of the group and not just tangentially involved.
Two new exemptions to the Immigration and Nationality Act, published in the Federal Register last Wednesday, mean that those who provided “insignificant” or “limited” material support for terror groups like the Mojahedin will no longer be automatically denied eligibility from asylum or refugee status.
The rules will affect about 3,000 people who have pending asylum cases, one refugee advocate told Politico, and an unknown additional number of people currently in the process of being deported. It will likely help Syrian refugees who would otherwise be blocked from receiving US aid by existing rules.
One Iranian who expects to be helped is Morteza Assadi, a 49-year-old real estate agent in northern Virginia. His green card application has been on hold for more than a decade.
As a teenager in Tehran, in the early 1980s, Assadi distributed fliers for the Mojahedin-e Khalq. Assadi said he told the US government about his activities when he and his wife applied for asylum in the late 1990s. Those asylum requests were granted. His wife has since become a US citizen. But Assadi’s citizenship application has remained stalled.
“When we are teenagers, we have different mindsets,” Assadi said. “I thought, I’m doing my country a favor.”
Assadi said he only briefly associated with the group, which was removed from Washington’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012, and that he was never an active member or contributor to its activities. Now he’s hopeful that the US government will look at his teenage activities as “limited.”
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman said the new exemption covers “material support that was insignificant in amount or provided incidentally in the course of everyday social, commercial, family or humanitarian interactions, or under significant pressure.”
DHS provided examples, such as business owners who unwittingly provided service to members of a terror group, aid workers who assisted members of a terror group during the aftermath of a natural disaster or civil conflict and people who had to pay a toll or tax to a terror group to pass through opposition-occupied territory.
“For instance, an owner of a restaurant who serves food to any paying customer, even though he knows some of them are members of an opposition group; or a mother or father who — as any parent would — fed and clothed their young adult child, even when they knew their child is part of a resistance movement,” the DHS spokeswoman said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who has for years been championing a change in the “material support” definition, said, “The existing interpretation was so broad as to be unworkable. It resulted in deserving refugees and asylees being barred from the United States for actions so tangential and minimal that no rational person would consider them supporters of terrorist activities,” Leahy said. “These changes help return our nation to its historic role as a welcoming sanctuary to the world’s most vulnerable populations.”
The change is one of the first made by President Obama since he said in his State of the Union address last month that he would avoid the clogged Congress by taking as many actions as he legally could on his own.
Some in Congress are already complaining. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the change naive, given today’s global terrorist threats.
“President Obama should be protecting US citizens rather than taking a chance on those who are aiding and abetting terrorist activity and putting Americans at greater risk,” said Goodlatte.