Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“The Advance”17 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Summary of Discussion General Discussion DR. WIXMAN: While we often hear about high birth- rates being major causes of nationalism, the reverse—- that is, where low fertility is one of the primary rea- sons for rises in nationalism—;is also important. In the former Soviet Union, for example, the rapid rise in Russian nationalism was very? much tied to a sense of rapidly declining fertility. In Germany, the lowering of the birthrate is also one of thefprimary factors in the rise of the German national consciousness. Are there people doing work on the correlation between declin- ing fertilities and the rise of ethnic national conscious- ness? DR. FULLER: Yes, exactly along the lines you say and for exactly the reasons that you say. In fact, I can say that the people that are sponsoring this conference have published a paper along exactly those lines. QUESTION: Why does the United States distinguish between ethnic and political refugees in the way they are treated? DR. SCHWARTZ: Frankly, in‘ part to keep out people from coming in who are seen as potentially draining to the economy. This is a complicated issue, however. DR. DE BLIJ: The distinction between refugees is a holdover from the Communist period. The current definition of refugees is related to the political system they leave when they come here. DR. SCHWARTZ: The definitions come from the ' 1951 UN convention and the 1é967 protocol. The 1951 convention was based on the post-World War II refu- gee regime, while the I967 protocol was attached onto that in order to deal with peoples from other areas of the world. Dr Kenzer, do you want to elaborate on that? DR. KENZER: You can sum it up in one word, poli- tics. How can you say that Cubans are refugees and Haitians are not? It’s a political issue. People do not want to hear that underlying our definitions for entry are issues of race and other things. DR. SCHWARTZ: There is still the distinction between economic migrants and political refugees. The United States does not have a category of an eco- nomic refugee. DR. DE BLIJ: We do not. It’s irrelevant. The defini- tion of a refugee is someone from a Communist coun- try. DR. KENZER: The distinction is becoming an impor- tant issue. We are going to see refugees being cast in a different light; all emphasis is going to be on Central Americans and people beyond. DR. SCHWARTZ: A good test case would be Nicara- gua, from where we once accepted political refugees but after the govemment changed, the departees became economic migrants. DR. DE BLU: We also do not accept people from Communist China, but we do take people from Com- munist Cuba. QUESTION: We do accept Chinese refugees; they are the ones who are allowed to have only one child. DR. DE BLU: You are right. 165 t Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.