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Julia V. Taft Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Press Briefing on Kosovo Refugees Washington, DC, April 30, 1999 Released by the Office of the Spokesman

Assistant Secretary Taft: Thank you very much. On April 21, Vice President Gore announced that the U.S. would participate in this international burden-sharing of refugees that were inundating Macedonia, and said that we would bring 20,000 of them to the United States.

As we have developed the program, it has two components. One is an emergency component, which the Secretary announced today, which determined that we would be bringing people directly to Fort Dix for processing. The second component is processing out of Macedonia. Last week, after the Vice President made his announcement, I deployed David Robinson with a representative from the International Organization for Migration, which is an organization that always assists us in refugee movement, along with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and a representative from the voluntary agency structure that resettles refugees in the United States.

They just got back last night, having set up a processing facility inside of Macedonia which will enable us to identify people in the camps, get them interviewed for INS, get medical examinations and then their sponsorship arranged, and then they will come directly to their homes and their new sponsors in the United States.

While this was going on, a new phenomenon has occurred in Macedonia. You've seen the statistics -- in the last 3 days, more than 19,500 new refugees have poured out of Kosovo into Macedonia and have exceeded the capacity of Macedonia to provide them immediate shelter.

There's a heroic effort going on in Macedonia now to open up new camp sites. There is one large one that will hold about 15,000, and another four sites that will hold fewer people. But those are going up right now. They are working around the clock so that the new arrivals will have someplace to stay. But the biggest challenge is, how do we make room for even more?

It was on that basis that the Secretary, in consultation with the White House today, said in addition to our normal processing out of Macedonia, we must immediately bring people directly to the United States. So we expect, probably by mid-week next week that Fort Dix will receive its first plane-load of people. They will be coming in to be processed as refugees. There will be probably about 400 in that first flight, and then we expect another flight to Fort Dix later in the week.

Also next week -- toward the end of the week -- we will have our first plane-load of people directly from Macedonia who will go not to Fort Dix, but will go into homes in the United States. So we have a two-track approach here:

• one which is processing people from Macedonia -- most of those will be family ties and family reunification; and then
  
• this emergency program.

We have had an outpouring of interest and compassion and offers of assistance ever since this program was announced. You have available to you the information about the nine agencies that are on contract to the United States State Department, which is the framework for the resettlement of refugees in this country. We've just met with these organizations today and discussed exactly how they will become operational at the Fort Dix facility. They are already receiving assurances and offers of sponsorship. But it would be really helpful to us if you can make this list known to your listeners and your readers so that people in the United States will know who they can contact.

There is also an interaction hot line number -- 1-800-727-4420 -- which can do two things. It can both help family members learn how they can sponsor their relatives that are among the refugee flows, and also how they can find out who the volunteer agency in their area is, if they would like to offer other kinds of assistance.

We believe that this effort is certainly not going to solve the problem in Macedonia of huge influxes. But because it is part of an international effort to move these people to a variety of countries, we believe that it will be successful in alleviating the burden that Macedonia has.

For those of you who have watched the situation, Macedonia has done an incredible job of absorbing as many people as it can. They've continued to be cooperative on new sites, and we are very encouraged by their willingness to open even more with this recent influx.

I am not a novice to these kinds of programs. As a matter of fact, I used to stand up here quite a lot 24 years ago when I ran the Indo-Chinese refugee program, when 131,000 Indo-Chinese came to the United States. I am sort of doing deja vu all over again. But we have, in those years, developed a very streamlined process for doing this.

It is important to note, though, that while the refugees will be coming here and be received throughout the country with their relatives and other host families, that they really do want to go back home. So we are going to make sure that we are able to provide transportation back to allow them to go back to Kosovo when it is safe for them to return. But at this point, the situation is so desperate we feel this is a generous way for the U.S. to receive them and care for them until they can go home.

With those opening remarks, let me respond to any questions that you have.

Question: How many offers have you received so far from host families?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We have received thousands of offers from host families, which is different from the number of petitions that we have received from family members here that want to be reunited with people that are in Macedonia. The number of people that have been identified that have relatives here is 1,800.

Now, those have been generated from the interaction hotline that I gave you just in the past five days, so they're coming in all the time. For those 1,800, they are processed now and somebody is carrying out all those documents tonight to go to Skopje and get the families in the stream.

Question: So will they be in this first plane-load that comes over next week?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We hope -- it will be a mixture. We will bring some of them and we will bring what has been considered vulnerable populations, too -- intact families or people who need to be evacuated. So we'll see a mixture of that, but there will be family reunification as part of the first flights.

Question: Now, you said that some have already been processed in Macedonia, and they will be free to go where they want once they get here -- to their particular host families or relatives. Are those flights arriving anywhere else differently? Or is everyone coming directly to Fort Dix?

Assistant Secretary Taft: No, the ones that come to Fort Dix will not be fully processed by the time they get to Fort Dix. We have to go through medical screening so that communities that receive the refugees know that these people are very healthy. We have to go through the full sponsorship. So the ones that come to Fort Dix will stay there a week or 2 weeks while this is happening. Those that are coming directly from Macedonia will already have had all of their clearances and their sponsorship. They will come on a charter flight, probably to JFK, and then go to their final destination.

Question: Just -- I don't know if you can be more specific in terms of when that first flight to Fort Dix will arrive? I know, it's always pinning you down.

Assistant Secretary Taft: We think on Wednesday, but Fort Dix has been getting ready for this. Until we saw the statistics over the last day or two, we didn't think we were going to need Fort Dix. So we have spent this morning getting in touch with the Governor and the Congressional delegation and in getting DOD ready. We also have worked out the details with the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Health and Human Services that will actually provide the infrastructure support, the catering and the accommodations, and then meeting today with the voluntary agencies to make sure they would be on site.

So we think Wednesday is the right date. Now, we're also targeting May 8 as the date in which the charter flight of fully-cleared people will come to the U.S.--

Question: What other countries are accepting these emergency allotments?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Okay, thank you very much for that. Just to show you that this is a real international effort, we have had offers from -- the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has had offers from about 25 to 30 different countries. The largest number to date that have actually moved have been 10,000 to Germany. Then we've got other countries that are really coming forward. Austria has offered to take 10,000. They've been processing people for days. The Netherlands has been processing -- I think it's almost completed the 2,000 it is taking. Norway was the first, actually, to accept refugees -- I'm sorry -- Turkey was the first to accept refugees. They've got about 4,000 or 5,000. But they have offered to take 20,000.

Question: (Inaudible) -- that Turkey has offered?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Turkey has offered to take 20,000. They have got about 5,000 so for. Another key country is Norway that has offered to take 6,000. I think they have probably processed over 600.

Other countries include France, Finland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Canada, Chile, Bulgaria -- a few, Belgium has offered 1,200, Australia -- 4,000. We can make this list available to you. But it shows that everybody is trying to be helpful here.

The countries that are in the region - which are Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece -- are the key ones -- and Croatia, they are all trying to be responsive. If the countries can't accept refugees, they are also, instead offering assistance. As you know, the U.S. has put in over $185 million in the humanitarian assistance response to the Kosovar Albanians. But that is, in fact, being done in region. This is in addition.

Question: In light of the greater numbers that are flowing out of Kosovo, which you mentioned, is there any thought of raising the U.S. offer? Was it 20,000 - is that what the offer?

Assistant Secretary Taft: 20,000.

Question: That's one question. Secondly, during the NATO summit, the leader of Macedonia was highly critical of the slow pace in which the refugees were being absorbed. Two or three plane-loads isn't really even near 20,000. Can you just explain how the pace of bringing 20,000 --

Assistant Secretary Taft: Well, I think he is frustrated because he's -- he has a large numbers of refugees. He has seen that the international community -- the collective total the international community to date has offered is 111,000 various positions, which would be quite good because he's got about 150,000. But again, if you are on the front line there and you see a surge of new people coming, you want to make sure that you have as many getting temporary asylum going out the door as those that are coming in, and we are not at that equilibrium.

Question: Is there any chance of raising the number beyond 20,000? Have you put any thought into that?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Let's get out 20,000. The other thing that we're doing is trying to develop camps inside of Albania. The military has been tasked to develop a camp or a series of smaller camps -- but in the same location -- at a place called Fier. They are going forward with that. The capacity there is 20,000. Today we just have another meeting on it, and we're asking them to find another location for another 20,000. So that will help.

Those that go to Fier will mostly be people from Macedonia. They're being brought over. But the other camp could well be for those that are already in Albania.

Question: So basically are we talking about 1,200 by the end of next week that are going to be here? 400 on each of these flight?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Well, 400 on the two flights that will go to Fort Dix and we expect probably about 100, 150 on the flight that's coming directly from Macedonia with the cleared people. It will take us -- it will take us another couple weeks to get the Macedonian operation fully operating.

Question: That will be 1,800 people who have already been identified as -- these are people who have called in and said, I have an uncle, and I know he's in Macedonia?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Yes.

Question: Do you know that these people are in Macedonia? I mean, are they --

Assistant Secretary Taft: Do we know they are in Macedonia?

Question: Once -- I mean, when your team goes back to try and find these people --

Assistant Secretary Taft: - Right.

Question: Do they know they're there? Are they --

Assistant Secretary Taft: Yes, as a matter of fact, one of the incredible technologies that exists are something called cell phones. People have been calling back to their relatives. They know where they are.

Now, I must say that the 1,800 is only ones that we know of that are in the camps in Macedonia. We're also getting calls for people that are in Albania, but we're not processing those right now.

Question: And the emergency flights, the 400 ones that will go to Fort Dix, are all of these people very ill?

Assistant Secretary Taft: - No.

Question: Why are they classified as emergency -- is it them that's the emergency, or is the emergency Macedonia?

Assistant Secretary Taft: The emergency is Macedonia.

Question: Okay, so these people are -- there's nothing particularly wrong with them.

Assistant Secretary Taft: No. But you see, these people have been traumatized. And to have them stay in these tents without the kind of care and outreach that we can offer them, it's better that they come here. But don't get the impression that they're vulnerable because they're all extremely ill.

We are interested, however, with refugees that do have special needs. We have ways to take care of them here. The agencies are very good about that. So they certainly wouldn't be excluded, and would be encouraged.

Question: One more really quick one and I won't take up -- the 150 or 100 that will arrive on the charter plane, they are to JFK?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Probably, I don't know.

Question: That's May 8?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We're planning it for May 8; the target date is May 8. In other words, please don't call me up here May 9 and say, wait a minute, the plane is a day late. The planning for that is the arrival on May 8.

Question: Apart from the 1,800 places that have been identified with relatives, how many other places have you identified in the United States for other refugees?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We don't, ourselves, identify them. The calls that have come in to the FEMA hotline -- the 1-800-USAIDRELIEF - indicate willingness of communities and churches to accept people. Those offers are being shared with the agencies that actually are doing the processing. We are not the middle-man. We're trying to --

Question: Do you know how many there are?

Assistant Secretary Taft: They've gotten 45,000 calls of people who want to be helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean people who are offering sponsorship. But you see, we have to be somewhat careful here. We can't -- we've gotten offers -- very nice offers of people who would like to have 100 Albanians come and work on their farm. That's nice that they want to offer something. So what we are trying to figure out is since we don't do the actual sponsorship ourselves, the agencies themselves will vet those offers and decide whether or not they can find which ones would be useful for them.

Question: How long, then, do you think people will have to stay at Fort Dix? I mean, what's the capacity there?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Well, the capacity is at this point about 2,000. But we don't expect to have more than maybe 1,000 at a time there.

The other thing is that what we're very much interested in is making sure that this emergency evacuation is handled as an emergency and that as the other stream expands inside of Macedonia, that that will the primary vehicle for bringing people in. So our time horizon now, is maybe for a month we'll use Fort Dix and then rely on the direct movement later on.

Question: Several questions that are related. Are the people coming into Fort Dix going to be coming in on military flights or charters?

Assistant Secretary Taft: It's going to be a charter flight, an American flag charter.

Question: It sounds as though you expect that pace to pick up, that there will be more flights in coming weeks, is that correct?

Assistant Secretary Taft: There will be more flights out of Macedonia. Whether or not they go to Fort Dix depends on whether or not we can do all the processing in Macedonia. Our preference is to do as much of the processing in Macedonia as possible. So we're looking at the combination for starters. As soon as we can have a good enough capacity in Macedonia, we won't need Fort Dix any more.

Question: Those people would come into JFK or some civilian airport?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Right.

Question: How many can you process in Macedonia in a week, say?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We've looked at that. We think we may have the capacity of processing 400 a day. INS is bringing in its trained officers to do that. We have physicians to do the medical clearances, and we have the representation of the voluntary agencies there. But, you know, at that rate, we're going to use up our 20,000 pretty well. So that's optimum at this point.

Question: There was talk a couple weeks ago that the ideal would be -- or the hope was that the European countries would take people first because that was closer, it was easier to move them back to - to Kosovo when that time came. Is that still the hope? Or is --

Assistant Secretary Taft: It's still the hope, of course. But I guess the sense here is that we have to consider the well being of these people. That's first and foremost -- how can they best be protected? How can they best be assisted until they can go back home?

What we have done here -- originally, they didn't want -- it wasn't thought that they ought to come all the way to the United States, then we fly them all the way back. But because other countries were coming forward, and we were encouraging them to come forward, our President said, I want us to come forward, and we are really going to participate. But we will be, obviously, keeping track of all of the refugees who come in. When it is safe for them to return, they will be encouraged to do so and assisted in being able to. However, if they chose to stay -- under our laws -- they may stay.

Question: Some quick follow-ups. One follow-up to just that -- I think it's been raised in this briefing room before -- how concerned are you that the refugees that will come here will want to stay and won't want to go back home? Especially to a very unpredictable environment. They might have much more predictable places here in the United States. I mean, are you concerned that they will want to stay?

Assistant Secretary Taft: I don't believe it is our right to tell people what they have to do, and that they have to make their own choices here. We fortunately have a country where they can do that, and a process where they can make that choice. But I have been tracking and working on the Kosovo problem for a few years now - and most intensively during the past year when so many people were displaced in their own country -- and the quality that I see most dominant in them is their absolute commitment to their villages, to their community, and to their land.

One of the problems we've actually is that people who - even though they may be offered an opportunity for temporary asylum in Europe or wherever, they want to stay so close to Kosovo so that they can go back soon. So that's why it's very important for us to reassure them. I think they will go back. Not maybe all of them. But I think they will.

We are committed with our other allies to make sure that conditions are good for them when they go back and that they can help rebuild their lives there.

Question: Out of the 20,000 how many would you estimate are going to go through Fort Dix at some point?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Well, as I say, Fort Dix is just for the emergency period here. I don't know maybe -- 3,000, 4,000. I don't know. It's hard for me to say because it depends on how many we can process outside of - in Macedonia. But we are looking at this as an immediate response, and then the focus will be over the long-term until we meet the full 20,000 to do the balance there.

Question: Who pays for the care of the refugees in long-term? I mean long-term by beyond getting them here and sending them through Fort Dix? I mean, are you expecting the families that take them to basically support them? Expecting them to get jobs? Or will the government still be contributing some to help them?

Assistant Secretary Taft: The government does contribute. We have had a long standing program of refugee resettlement in the United States. It has two component parts. First of all, the State Department gives a grant - an initial grant -- to the resettlement agencies for them to help find the first houses or apartments for the people, to get them the food, to make sure that they clothes, and some utensils and some amenities in their house. They help them get their Social Security card. They take them down to language training or orientation programs. This is all done by the voluntary agencies. In addition to that, after the first 30 days, they are eligible for welfare benefits, if they need it.

Now, we have a procedure that we encourage early self-sufficiency for refugees. We think that's an important element. So we do everything we can to get them jobs, and so they are not dependent. But they are also covered by Medicaid. This is a program. We're not making any changes of it for the Kosovar Albanians. This is what we do always. It's one of the things that's a hallmark of the United States internationally because we are -- we really think these are special people and we have a special obligation as a country that --

Question: Does anything go to the family that takes in a refugee?

Assistant Secretary Taft: No.

Question: What kind of demand is there among the refugees to come to the United States?

Assistant Secretary Taft: We'll find out.

Question: Okay, and if it's high, what would be the priorities that you would give to selecting someone to come here?

Assistant Secretary Taft: Obviously the first priority is if they have a family member. That is it. Second is if they want to come and their family is intact in the refugee camp, that is fine. We do not want to split families, and we certainly will not take people if they say they do not want to come to the United States. So all of these statistics are based on -- hopefully people will find - find this a good offer.

But because many of the refugees - the Kosovars have relatives in Europe, in Germany and other places, they may not want to come to the United States. We are not forcing anybody to get on any plane that doesn't want to come here.

Question: What's your working budgetary assumption for the cost of bringing 20,000 people in?

Assistant Secretary Taft: $40 million.

Question: What exactly is the legal status of these people once they arrive? You just said that if they want to stay, they can. Then you started talking about them getting Social Security cards, jobs, being eligible for welfare, medical coverage. So what is the precise -- because yesterday or two days ago, we were told that they would not be eligible for any -- well, not for --

Assistant Secretary Taft: Who told you that?

Question: Brian Atwood said that they had to be here -- one, a person had to be here a year before they became eligible to apply for permanent residence status.

Assistant Secretary Taft: That's why I'm briefing today. This is a program that is actually - the domestic resettlement side is managed by the State Department and by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. There are arrangements with every state in the country about the benefits level and how people get assistance. Now, if they are otherwise eligible under TANF, which the welfare program here, they are eligible to go into that. If they're not - because they're not a dependent family or they're just single or unmarried -- or a married couple with no children, there is an 8 month program of assistance that they can get. We're not making any changes from that. But this is - we're only talking about 20,000 people. We bring in -- this year we're bringing 78,000 refugees from other parts of the world. So this is over and above that number.

Question: His question was on permanent residency?

Assistant Secretary Taft: What happens -- you come in as a refugee and you have one year before you can -- I believe it's one year - before you can then become a permanent resident alien. Then you are eligible for citizenship after five years. So this is the procedure.

Now, we do not expect the majority of these people to stay that long. It may have been confusion over what happens after one year. But the provisional status of a refugee is for the first year.

Question: Right, but before that first year --

Assistant Secretary Taft: They get access to the services.

Question: Right, but they are not allowed to apply for permanent residence?

Assistant Secretary Taft: That is correct.

Question: Quick question. Are any refugees already here? I think my network interviewed a couple. A woman had gone to, I think, Macedonia, to bring her sister and her sister's husband here and they were issued a -- they told us they were issued the first two visas. This was the couple that testified on the Hill yesterday.

Assistant Secretary Taft: There may be visas that are issued for certain kinds of families. But they do not come in as refugees and get the refugee benefits. There are a variety of ways people can come in. But we have not brought in under any refugees under the 20,000 program that we are developing. They might have come in as an immigrant or come in as a temporary visitor or something like that.

There are, however, in this country, 8,000 Kosovar Albanians who have been granted what we call temporary protected status; which means they were here in the U.S. at the time that the conflict began. Actually, no, the first TPS was granted a year ago when the crisis began -- March 1998. They have been allowed to stay. They're not refugees, but they have been allowed to stay. That means we don't send them back home.

Question: They will be covered --

Assistant Secretary Taft: No. Temporary Protective Status only means that you can work here.

Ms. Rusch: Apply for asylum if you wish obtain permanent status and if you are granted it then you are basically the same status as you would be if you had come in under our program as a refugee. But otherwise, Temporary Protective Status is temporary, but you do have work authorization. You aren't entitled to benefits.

Question: And what was the number of those people?

Assistant Secretary Taft: 8,000.

Question: How long can they stay?

Assistant Secretary Taft: They can stay until it terminates. This is a designation that the Attorney General makes when somebody is here and then their country is no longer viable, and we allow them to stay. We have Temporary Protective Status for Sierra Leonians and Rwandans and quite a lot of groups. But again, they don't get the benefits.

Anyway, I hope we'll be able to announce that the plane has arrived mid next week.

Thank you very much.

[end of document]

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