In recent years, refugees have arrived by the tens of thousands from Somalia, Ethiopia and Iraq. And now there may be more from Kosovo. The U.S. government last week offered to grant temporary asylum to 20,000 ethnic Albanians forced out of Yugoslavia by Slobodan Milosevic's forces. Whether or not the plan will go forward is now uncertain, government officials say, because conditions for refugees have become more stable in camps in Macedonia and Albania and because many expressed reluctance to go to the designated site, the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. If Kosovo refugees do make the trip, history suggests some will eventually become permanent refugees in the United States.
History provides a guide for that, too.
Listen to America's adopted refugees, whether from Laos, Kurdistan, Cuba or Bosnia, and a common thread emerges. All they want is to go home. In 1991, Mithat and Senada Sadovic were corporate lawyers in Mostar, Bosnia's second-largest city. They lived in a plush apartment with a big piano. They took their three children on month-long seashore vacations.