ABSTRACT
Since 1980, one to two million Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans have fled their homes. An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 have crossed international borders, the remainder being displaced within their own countries. The legal and humanitarian support networks that assist Central Americans, as well as large sections of the public and the press, consider the majority of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans in the United States to be "refugees" who have fled their countries because of repression, war, and violence. The United States signed the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1968, and in 1980 Congress passed Refugee Act, which defines refugees in almost the same terms as the protocol. Asylum procedures were established initially to process small but continuing stream of east Europeans who came to the United States on political grounds. The State Department briefly changed its position regarding safe haven for Salvadorans upon repeated pleas for leniency and generosity from Salvador's President Jose Napoleon Duarte.
