U.S. Suspends Immigration of Soviet Armenians : Entry of 5,000 Blocked by a ‘Financing Problem,’ Dispute over Refugee Status

MOSCOW — The United States has suspended the immigration of more than 5,000 Armenians from the Soviet Union amid controversy over Washington’s practice of granting them refugee status to speed their admission.

Ambassador Jack F. Matlock Jr. said Friday that the U.S. Embassy here has postponed until October or later the departure of Soviet immigrants, most of them Armenians, who were to receive refugee status in the United States.

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged the decision to delay processing the visas and said: “That’s an unfortunate situation. We are hopeful that will be rectified as soon as possible.,”

Fitzwater indicated that the issue was limited to “a financing problem” that the White House hopes will be “straightened . . . out very soon.”

He said President Reagan has been made aware of the situation and is “very concerned about it. It is contrary to our policy.”

Fitzwater did not respond directly to the issue of whether the Armenians are entitled to refugee status.

A ‘Compassionate’ Program

“We have a refugee program . . . that is compassionate and tries to assimilate these people into society as rapidly as possible,” he said. “There is a considerable cost associated with relocation and resettlement, but it clearly is a problem that the President wants to work out, and I’m confident that it will be.”

About 5,000 to 6,000 people who had expected to leave the Soviet Union in the next three months and had been given dates for obtaining their American visas are affected, U.S. officials here said.

Matlock explained that, as a result of an unexpected surge in the number of refugees from the southern Soviet republic of Armenia, the U.S. government has exhausted its budgeted funds for their resettlement and is deferring their immigration until the next fiscal year, beginning in October.

Improper Refugee Status

But the decision comes after discussions within the U.S. government concluded that thousands of Armenians were being given visas as refugees improperly because neither the embassy nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service had determined that they had the “well-founded fear of persecution” required by federal law as a condition for refugee status.

Refugee status ensures much faster admission to the United States than ordinary immigrant status, even if an immigrant has relatives in the United States. Until now, Armenians--and almost any other Soviet citizen seeking to leave--were classified as refugees almost automatically and given political asylum.

“Traditionally, people wanting to leave here were doing so essentially for political reasons, and having received exit permission they could not continue living normally,” Matlock said. “Our assumption would be that they would face political discrimination after cutting all their ties.”

This assumption was challenged in May by State Department lawyers who noted that the Armenians generally did not claim to be fleeing political persecution but said they wanted to improve their standard of living or to join relatives in California and other states.

Rise Preceded Disturbances

Although both Soviet Armenia and the neighboring Soviet republic of Azerbaijan have been shaken by nationalist protests and communal violence over the past five months, the increase in Armenian refugee applications began long before the disturbances.

The current suspension, although attributed to a shortage of resettlement funds, is intended to give the State Department, the INS and other U.S. agencies a chance to review the situation and work out a new policy, embassy sources said.

The decision could also affect Soviet Jews going to the United States as refugees, but Matlock said they generally apply for visas in Vienna or Rome.

The U.S. decision, put into effect abruptly this week, left groups of Armenians, mostly families of a dozen people each, huddled at the embassy here and wondering what their next move is to be.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Mushegh Sarafyan, one of the would-be immigrants, said. “What are we supposed to do for the next three months?

“When the letters came from the embassy saying that we should come for this last interview before leaving, we gave up our jobs, gave up our apartments, sold our furniture, sold our clothes and came to Moscow.

“Now they tell us the U.S. government has no money to resettle us in America. But we did not ask for money. We asked for visas. . . . And America is such a rich country, so why can’t it afford to take in 70 Armenian families?”

Many more than the 70 families now outside the embassy are involved, however. Pre-departure interviews had been scheduled for the next three months at the embassy.

“We are dealing with unprecedented numbers,” an embassy official said. “That has created all sorts of problems--in terms of authorized immigrant and refugee quotas, in terms of budgetary expenditures, in terms of processing all those applying for visas--and the system has broken down under the weight of it all.”

In June the embassy issued a record 2,063 immigration visas, 94% of which were for Armenians going to the United States with refugee status.

In the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the embassy expects to have granted 9,500 Soviet citizens, mostly Armenians, permission to resettle in the United States as refugees, according to embassy officials. From October, 1986, to September, 1987, only 1,800 such visa requests were approved, the officials said.

These figures do not include most of the departing Soviet Jews, who generally leave with visas for Israel and obtain U.S. visas in Western Europe.

Some Soviet Armenian immigrants in Los Angeles said they fear for their relatives stranded in Armenia. But paradoxically, several community representatives, long ambivalent about an exodus that they say drains their homeland and is straining community service agencies here, welcomed the news.

“Good. Thank God,” said Diana Aslanian, project director of the Armenian Relief Society in Glendale. “We can’t help all these people. Thank God.”

“We do not like to see people leaving Soviet Armenia in large numbers because the Armenians are leaving their homeland,” said Lorig Titizian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee, a political advocacy group based in Glendale. “We would not like to see our homeland depleted of Armenians.”

As word of the suspension seeped into the large community of Soviet Armenians in Hollywood, however, some said they were anxious and afraid.

“The uncertainty is very depressing, very intimidating,” said Grigor Egian, who had expected his relatives to join him this month but was told Friday that their visa processing was suspended.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang, in Washington, and Esther Schrader, in Los Angeles, contributed to this story.