U.S. Petitioned to Admit Cambodians
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BANGKOK — An American group helping Cambodian refugees Friday petitioned the U.S. government to accept up to 12,000 people Washington had previously rejected for immigration.
Citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month easing rules for political asylum, the Cambodia Crisis Committee asked the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to review the cases.
The committee said in a statement that the refugees, numbering between 5,000 and 12,000, were living in a camp that Thailand was closing because other countries were no longer offering the refugees asylum.
Thailand opened the camp in 1979 after other countries pledged to accept the thousands of Cambodians who fled either the Khmer Rouge government or the Vietnamese who overthrew it.
“The United States had an agreement with Thailand to take the people they let in,” committee director Peter Pond said.
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