By 1982, some two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand refugees from El Salvador—a country of only five million people—and tens of thousands of Guatemalans had fled to the US. Under the 1980 Refugee Act and international law, they had the right to asylum, but the migrants’ applications were turned down, while there was no limit on those claiming asylum from socialist Cuba and Nicaragua, or the European socialist states.105 The Reagan administration categorized the refugees as “economic migrants,” maintaining that the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments had not violated their human
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