Hello, America: Refugees land in N.J.
Haxhi Haxhaj
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05/06/99- Updated 01:35 AM ET
By Vivienne Walt, Special for USA TODAY
STANKOVC REFUGEE CAMP, Macedonia - At daybreak
Wednesday,
two friends stood near the gate of this huge camp,
sobbing in each other's
arms, too choked up even to say farewell.
Both men, students at Kosova's Prishtina University
until just last month, were
set to leave for the United States in the first group
of 453 Kosovar refugees
to be accepted for U.S. settlement.
But as the buses began to fill before dawn to carry
the refugees to a 747,
Arben Shatri decided he could not wrench himself from
the Balkans.
"I will wait here to join the KLA," he said,
referring to the Kosova Liberation
Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla army that is
fighting Serb forces just 15
miles from here. "My parents are in Albania, my one
brother is in Sweden.
My other brother and I will go fight," Shatri, 23,
said.
But 453 other Kosova refugees arrived at McGuire Air
Force Base in New
Jersey Wednesday, leaving behind this crowded camp
and their war-ravaged
homeland. They were bused to nearby Fort Dix, where
they will stay for a
few weeks before being placed in homes around the
country.
Another group of 100 refugees was expected to arrive
Saturday at New
York's Kennedy Airport, where they would meet
relatives and sponsor
families. Eight hundred additional refugees are
scheduled to fly into Fort Dix
next week - 400 each on Monday and Wednesday. The
United States has
agreed to accept 20,000 ethnic Albanian refugees over
the next couple of
weeks.
Military officials at Fort Dix have worked overtime
to make refugees feel
welcome at the base . The sign hanging over the
base's
gym-turned-processing centre reads: Mirsevini në
Amerikë (Welcome to
America). Dormitories hold playrooms bursting with
board games, baseball
bats, indoor basketball nets and plastic kitchen
sets. There is a big-screen
television.
There will be reminders of home, too. An empty room
serves as a place of
prayer for Muslims. All signs inside the dormitories
and dining hall have been
translated into Albanian. And the Fort Dix cooks are
being instructed on
preparing Albanian foods.
"The goal here is to provide a welcoming environment
which is comfortable,"
said Lavinia Limon, director of the Office of Refugee
Settlement for the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Most of the refugees selected by U.S. immigration
officials for the first
flights to the United States have spent at least a
month living in tents, amid
Stankovic's growing squalor.
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians have fled
to Macedonia and
Albania to escape an apparent Serb ethnic cleansing
campaign that began in
March and aims to keep the separatist province under
Belgrade's control.
Yet, for some refugees, leaving the region is no
cause for celebration. They
already have been forced out of their homes in
Kosova. Now they are going
across the world to a country where they know no one
and do not speak the
language.
"This is too far away," said Shatri's friend, Astrit
Hajdari, 20, wiping tears
from his cheeks. "This is a temporary stay for me.
That's all."
But how and when these refugees return home is
uncertain. "That's
something that perhaps you will have to ask Slobodan
Milosevic," U.S.
Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill said.
"They've been thrown out
of Kosova in a policy of forced expulsion. We're
looking at a Kosova that's
increasingly empty."
Under the immigration plan, the refugees are eligible
for permanent
residence in a year and U.S. citizenship five years
later. But if peace is
restored in Kosova, U.S. officials will resettle any
who want to return.
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