Peter Koehn - Refugees From Revolution: U.S. Policy and Third World Migration

First published 1991 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koehn, Peter H.

Refugees from revolution : U.S. policy and Third-World Migration /
by Peter H. Koehn.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. RefugeesGovernment policyUnited States. 2. Refugees.

I. Title.

JV6601.R4K642 1991

325.210973dc20

91-31275

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28541-8 (hbk)

It is a pleasure to acknowledge here that many people generously assisted with various aspects of Refugees from. Revolution. Although only a few can be singled out for individual recognition, all are remembered. I am most grateful to:

Above all, I am indebted to the many refugees from revolution who have taken time over the past eight years of involvement on this project to share their personal and often traumatic experiences and who have generously and patiently explained their migration decisions. It is to their future, and to the well being of others similarly situated or in the position of a potential refugee, that this book is dedicated.

Peter H. Koehn
Missoula, Montana

The movement of vast human populations across porous borders provides a striking indication of the declining relevance of the nation state at the dawn of the 21st century. East German authorities could not keep young people in; the United States Border Patrol cannot keep undocumented migrant workers from Central America out Chinese students engaged in overseas study, distressed by their governments response to events in Tiananmen Square, delay their return home. In the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a mass multinational exodus of third-country citizens occurs. Wealthy German and Scandinavian tourists maintain second homes on East African beaches. Not far away, on both sides of two borders in the Horn of Africa, hundreds of thousands of people subsist in squalor following involuntary population exchanges between Ethiopia and Sudan, and Ethiopia and Somalia. Another generation of Fulani herders in West Africa, undeterred by political boundaries arbitrarily established by self-interested and long-departed imperialist powers, continues to follow the rains. In Western Europe, meanwhile, government leaders in the former colonialist states plan the erosion of their countries own archaic boundaries by 1993.