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was done with little regard for the real-life consequences

to genuine refugees.

To take the surgery analogy further, the prognosis for

genuine victims of human rights abuses is bleak.  To be

blunt, because of the legislation, many people will die.

Some people with valid claims for asylum will be prevented

from applying within the required one year: technical defi-

ciencies in their applications may delay them.  Others, such

as torture and rape victims whose persecution was the most

traumatic, will be removed from the United States even

before they can present an asylum claim: they will have been

afraid or unable to explain their fear of persecution to a

uniformed immigration officer at the airport shortly after

their stressful flight from persecution, or they will have

been too ashamed to talk about their persecution at all.

We have heard more and more horror stories of mistakes

the INS has made in the expedited removal process.  Some

involved business travelers removed from the United States

and barred from reentering for five years because a single

immigration officer suspected that they had fraudulently

procured their travel documents.  Other mistakes involved

asylum seekers who were returned to their home countries to

face continued persecution.  Those are the stories we know

about.  Because the INS has prevented independent monitoring

or observation, one can only imagine how many other people

have been returned unnoticed to continued persecution or

death.  Yet the mistakes made under the expedited removal

provisions represent only one type of problem.  The one-year

filing deadline, which has not even taken effect yet, will

aggravate the problems.

Can the "patients" in the circumstances we have exam-

ined be saved?  Yes.  In the short term, the INS should

include fundamental protections for asylum seekers in its

final implementing regulations and practices, due to be

released in early 1998.  Such protections should be designed

to reduce the likelihood that genuine victims of persecution

will be sent back to their home countries before they are

able to present a thorough claim for asylum and that those

who enter the United States will not be prevented from

applying because of a technical defect in their applica-

tions.  Indeed, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) expressed his

nonrefoulment concerns by committing "to ensuring that those

with legitimate claims for asylum are not returned to perse-

cution, particularly for technical deficiencies."61