In his nightmares, he walks through a dark forest, crawls over corpses and relives his escape from war-torn Liberia.
"I would rather die than go back to Liberia," says the 14-year-old Maryland honor student, asserting he'd end up "either dead or poor."
In one of the longest-running immigration sagas of its kind, Joe and 10,000 to 15,000 other Liberians have been living in the United States under temporary legal status since 1991. Given extension after extension, they are being granted another reprieve from a pending Sept. 28 deportation order, a White House official said yesterday. He would not say how long the new extension would be.
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| AP PHOTO Fourteen-year-old Louis Joe looks on during a Liberian demonstration across from the White House on Sunday. |
"My future is still uncertain," said Joe after learning of the planned extension, which is expected to be officially announced later this week.
The previous extensions were granted to the Liberians as the civil war dragged on, but with the fighting officially over since 1997, the U.S. government believes the African country is becoming safe enough for their return one day.
To most, going back seems like a death sentence nonetheless.
"Here I can get an education ... There the schools aren't even open yet," said Joe, who lives in Ellicott City, a community between Washington and Baltimore. "Without that, I'm nobody. I'll have no life."
His father, Robert, teaches special education. His mother, Louise, a credit investigator for a private company, says keeping a job is tough when there's no guarantee she can stay where the family has established a better life.
This is the essence of the argument among Liberians who want to remain in the United States - perhaps forever. It's not so much that they believe they'll be killed, but that life in Liberia will be so much less than what they have here.
"These people have been here for 10 years, gotten married, had children who are U.S. citizens, started new lives," said Michael Wotorson of the Union of Liberian Associations of America, a Liberian advocacy group. "Now they have to root all that up and go home?"
Wotorson says Liberia "is not fit for most people to live in."
"There's no electricity, no sewage, there are no less than five paramilitary groups, unanswerable to no one, just roaming" the capital of Monrovia. "It's uninhabitable."
Fighting in Liberia from 1989 to 1997 shattered the nation founded by freed American slaves in 1822. It killed 200,000 and forced half the country's 2.6 million from their homes.
The war and the flight of business people disrupted the economy and left in shambles the infrastructure of a nation that even in prewar days had only one phone line for every 100 people.
Most of the Liberians in America are congregated in Rhode Island, or in areas around Washington, New York City's Bronx, Los Angeles and the North Carolina cities of Raleigh and Charlotte, Wotorson's group says.
A few legislators in Congress have been unable to push through a law that would allow the Liberians to stay longer and have a chance at permanent residency.
"The Liberians are always under the gauntlet ...year after year waiting to have their status renewed," Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) one of the sponsors, said at a rally Sunday in front of the White House.
The Liberians have what the Immigration and Naturalization Service calls temporary protected status, which allows for a stay of six to 18 months for people whose homeland is hit by natural disaster or war.
A Kennedy spokesperson said yesterday that President Clinton is planning to give Liberians a two-year extension this time. A decision is expected later this week.
Immigration officials say people from no other nation have remained in that year-to-year limbo as long as the Liberians. Though other nationalities have suffered conflicts that ran as long - such as Central Americans - legislation was passed sooner to allow them residency.
09-21-99
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