Last fall the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, attempted to draw worldwide attention to the “savagery” of Ethiopia's Marxist regime. “It is estimated that some 30,000 persons in Ethiopia were summarily executed for political reasons between 1974 and 1978,” she told the U.N. General Assembly on October 2, 1981. “Twelve-year-old children were among those immersed in hot oil. sexually tortured, or flung out of windows and left to die in the street.”

At about the same time Ambassador Kirkpatrick was detailing the horrors of the Mengistu government, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was busy preparing a review of the residency status of Ethiopians living in the United Stales.