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August 9, 2004 U.S. Is Ending Haven for Those Fleeing a Volcano By NINA BERNSTEIN http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/nyregion/09volcano.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position= [T] he volcano on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat had been slumbering for centuries when it awoke in 1995. Amid the banana groves and breadfruit trees of their tourist paradise, the islanders hoped that its eruptions would soon subside. Instead, within two years, 7,000 people - roughly two-thirds of the population - had to flee escalating explosions of rock, ash and toxic gas. Most went to other Caribbean islands or to Britain, which colonized Montserrat in the 17th century and still governs it. Fewer than 300 ended up in the United States, mostly living with relatives in New York and Boston. Since it was unsafe to send them back after their visitors' visas expired, the United States granted the Montserratians "temporary protected status," renewed year by year so they could legally stay and work until the worst was over. Now, in a startling twist that reflects a major change in immigration politics, the Department of Homeland Security is ordering the 292 Montserratians to leave by the end of February - not because it is safe to go home again, but because it is not going to be safe anytime soon. "The volcanic activity causing the environmental disaster in Montserrat is not likely to cease in the foreseeable future," Homeland Security officials explained in a June 25 notice ending Montserratians' temporary protected status effective Feb. 27, 2005. "Therefore it no longer constitutes a temporary disruption of living conditions that temporarily prevents Montserrat from adequately handling the return of its nationals." The decision has stunned islanders who rebuilt their lives in America from scratch. "It's devastating," said Sarah Ryner, 59, a public health nurse supervisor who lost her home and career in the volcanic aftermath and now works night shifts at a New Jersey hospital. "I'm just frozen, and my children are the same. We are saying: What can we do? Where can we go?" Homeland Security officials have an answer: Move to England. Montserrat is one of Britain's last overseas territories, many of its people descendants of the African slaves and Irish penal deportees sent to toil there 400 years ago. Citing scientific estimates that dangerous volcanic activity is likely for at least 20 years, and for perhaps as long as a couple of centuries, the Homeland Security notice advises those who choose not to return to the devastated island to consider exercising their claim to British citizenship and relocating to the motherland. The notice also took the British government by surprise. At the British Consulate in New York and the United Kingdom government office on Montserrat last week, press officers said they were not prepared to answer questions about the prospects of British residency for Montserratians like Mrs. Ryner; her son Craig Ryner, 35, now a New York subway station agent raising three Brooklyn-born children; or her divorced daughter, Pearl Ryner, 39, a teacher turned medical technologist. British officials are asking the United States government for more information, press officers said. Pearl Ryner's 14-year-old son, Khorri Silcott, who was 7 when he left the island, remembers half a dozen terrifying evacuations from the encroaching volcano before he and his grandmother could join his mother and uncle in New York. When his grandfather tried to follow, it was too late, the family said; the window for "temporary protected status" had closed, and Khorri's grandfather was repeatedly denied a visa to the United States before he died of stomach cancer at 60, alone in England. "I'm really worried right now," Khorri said. "It's like they're just kicking you out after you worked so hard." A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, William Strassberger, acknowledged that in other cases, temporary protected status ended only when a crisis was over - for Bosnians after the genocidal war stopped, for example, or for Salvadorans when hurricane damage was cleaned up. Protected status is in place for people from Burundi, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan. "The fact is, temporary protected status is not meant to be a permanent solution," Mr. Strassberger said. "In this particular case there is no end in sight." Except for a handful of Montserratians already sponsored for green cards through marriage to a United States citizen, he said, those losing protection have no way to convert to legal residency before the February deadline. No one is more upset by this turn of events than Vera E. Weekes, who worked on Montserrat as director of education in the 1980's before moving to New York and becoming a United States citizen. She spent years lobbying for a bill that would permanently legalize the Montserratians, only to see it stall when immigration policy changed after Sept. 11, 2001. "It's heartless," said Ms. Weekes, the assistant director of the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College at City University of New York. "It's unbelievable. We're talking about 292 people who have been here for eight years, who have settled, who are working.'' The sponsor of the bill for the Montserratians, Major R. Owens, a Democratic representative from Brooklyn, reintroduced it last year. But he said the bill was unlikely to emerge from a subcommittee in the current political climate. Before the volcanic eruptions of Soufriere Hills began, Montserrat was a favorite vacation spot of the rich and famous. When its dormant volcano turned deadly, the world watched in prime time as paradise met inferno. Now, with two-thirds of the 7-by-11-mile island buried in volcanic rubble and color-coded volcano alerts warning of new eruptions, there is little enthusiasm on the island for the return of the 292 expatriates and their children, some of whom were born in the United States and are therefore American citizens. "That certainly would be a problem," said Keith Stone-Greaves, press officer for the local government, "given that housing is critical." He and his counterpart at the British government office on the island, Richard Aspin, agreed that the Homeland Security decision took everyone by surprise. Mr. Aspin said he himself had to inform the British, after stumbling on the notice on the Internet the day after it was posted. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I read it," he added. "What do they want us to do, send these people into shelters?" Whether Montserratians who fail to leave the United States before the deadline will be deported to the island or sent elsewhere is unclear. Dan Kane, a spokesman for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which controls protected status, referred the question to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Homeland Security branch responsible for deportation; there, a spokeswoman said the issue had not yet come up. But Mr. Strassberger warned that after Feb. 27, the Montserratians would begin to accrue "illegal presence," a status that could bar them from future readmission to the United States for years. A better option for those with American relatives, he suggested, might be to apply for a green card through a relative's sponsorship and ride out the 12- to-20-year wait in Britain, returning when permanent residency comes through. Though 3,500 island residents moved to Britain by the late 1990's, England was not quick to open the door, Ms. Weekes and others pointed out. Eventually evacuees from Montserrat were granted special aid and residency waivers for access to national health care and other benefits in England, but only for people who went directly to Britain from Montserrat. Citizens of British overseas territories were not automatically entitled to British residency until 2002. The Monserratians in the United States do not automatically have British passports. Sarah Crichton, a spokeswoman at the British consulate in New York, said those special waivers were up for review next year, and she could not say whether they would apply to islanders who had been "temporarily" living in the United States. She suggested, however, that any Montserratian rendered homeless by the unexpected Homeland Security ruling would get a sympathetic hearing from British authorities. To Americanized Montserratians like Pearl Ryner, who is working nights in a medical lab while raising Khorri, Kherel, 11, and 16-month-old twins, that discussion adds insult to injury. "We who came here, we wanted to start a life on our own," she said. "I'm not trying to say that those who went to England are less ambitious. But those of us who came here took a harder route. And now they're telling us to throw it all away." Her brother Craig Ryner, the subway station agent, also works nights, as a fare booth attendant on the A and R stations all over New York. He visited England in 1987, and said he saw it was not for him. "It's not really moving like America is," he said. "Here there are more chances to better yourself. I'm praying every day that something will work out." Ms. Weekes is still trying. "I wrote the president a letter," she said. "And I said surely, this is not what America is all about." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company =========+========= FEEDBACK? http://nativenewsonline.org/Guestbook/guestbook.cgi GIVE FOOD: THE HUNGERSITE http://www.thehungersite.com/ Reprinted under the Fair Use http://nativenewsonline.org/fairuse.htm =========+========= Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Native News Online a Service of Barefoot Connection FREE LEONARD PELTIER!! "YOU ~ARE~ THE MESSAGE" Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nat-International/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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