OPINION
,.ml.
Page 4.
Thursday, October 29, 1981.
The Michigan Daily
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Wasserman
Vol. XCII, No. 43
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
1w I'WR To
CRA&5 THAT OUR
?gorR.AMv\ A'/ORS
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
Creative accounting
!V 7'
T WAS revealed this week that the
Labor Department is planning to
push for changes in the method of
computing the federal Consumer Price
Index, the official gauge used by the
government to measure the rate of in-
flation.
While no one is going to argue that
the CPI is perfect and should be
protected from change at all costs,
there is a question of exactly what the
administration's motivation is in
proposing the changes.
The proposals for changes in the CPI
come on the heels of an announcement
last week that the CPI climbed 1.2 per-
cent in September. That works out to
an annual inflation rate of more than 14
percent.
A substantial portion of that large
CPI jump was caused by continued
high domestic interest rates, rates
that, when computed as a part of
housing mortgage costs, greatly in-
cresed the housing component in the
index.
The government's proposed changes
would reduce the impact of interest
rates on the index and would thus,
during periods of high interest rates
like the nation is currently enduring,
lower the reported rate.
Granted, the record high interest
rates are distorting the Consumer
Price Index, but those interest rates
are, at the same time, raising costs to
millions of Americans for housing and
other essential needs.
What the government seems to be
doing, in effect, is apply one of the
basic rules of "creative" accounting:
If figures don't come out the way you
want them to, change the way you add
the numbers.
The administration move to change
the CPI - coming as it does im-
mediately after a particularly bad
surge in the index - seems to throw its
motivation into question. The ad-
ministration seems to desire not so
much an accurate measure of the in-
flation rate as a way to ease the em-
barrassmept of its inability to control
inflation.
The accuracy of the CPI probably
can be enhanced; enhancement of the
accuracy of the index, however, is
much more likely to come from
diligent study than from the dictates of
political expedience.
-
'A '
, ,
J
l
l )
C
v
LET ME POINT OUT
THAT A RISING
TIE LIFTSAXL
FROM~ "THE PEOPLE
viqftO DON'T
OWN~ BOATS
/
OF COURs5, w~
C-XPeCT T4C-VUUAL
&RUIM4BLN&..
a
/a
y '
A
The Moonies'
illegal aliens
The need to remember
By Andrew Ross
IT WAS A reunion of sorts. Many had
not seen each other for more than 30
years. But they weren't there to talk
about the homecoming queen or who
scored the winning touchdown in '45.
Instead, they shared tearful tales as
they remembered the electrified fen-
ces, the mass graves, and the fear and
pain they had experienced. But most
importantly, they remembered.
Liberators and the liberated met in
Washington Tuesday at the State
Department for a two-day conference
of survivors of the Nazi concentration
camps. Many of those who had been in
the camps had not seen their liberators
in over three decades.
True, the stories the people at the
conference swapped were not all
tragedies-many survivors related
their elation as they finally realized
their liberators had arrived.
At a time when so many are attem-
pting to make us forget the past, it is
important that we realize human
beings are indeed capable of atrocity.
Tuesday's conference served as a
reminder of just that. As one survivor
reportedly said: "There is a certain
moral authority that goes with what we
have seen. Together we must speak up
against war, hate, racism, anti-
Semitism."
And although it certainly won't end
those problems, remembering can
strengthen our resolve to oppose them.
.4
-4
* 1 HOPE ITS NQTmIN6 SERIOUS ,
MI
f7-
/
SAN FRANCISCO-As the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon faces charges of tax evasion and
widespread criticism for the aggressive
recruiting practices of his Unification Chur-
ch, evidence is growing that the church's
overall legal problems actually may involve
thousands of its members. '
According to the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service, as many as 2,000
church members-popularly known as
"Moonies"-are illegal aliens.
FORMER UNIFICATION Church mem-
bers, as well as government and private in-
vestigators, say foreign members now may
account for up to 50 percent of the total church
membership in this country.
The church claims 10,000 full-time mem-
bers in the United States, though most outside
observers put the number at considerably
less.
"The number of illegal aliens associated
with the Unification Church is over-
whelming," says Robert Morscorak, who is in
charge of investigations for the San Francisco
office of the INS, "and I get the feeling it is
becoming more widespread throughout the
Unted States." Asked to estimate how many
foreigners who are recruited here become
illegal aliens, another INS investigator
replied bluntly, "All of them."
IN FACT, SAY former Unification Church
members, foreign tourists are being
specifically targeted by Moonie recruiters.
"We were told to pick on people with back-
packs and flags, anyone who looked like they
were strangers or traveling," says Ken Con-
ner, who, with his father, now runs a
"deprogramming" and counseling service in
Princeton, W. Va.
"Tourists are much more impressed with
the friendly, outgoing approach of the
Moonies," says Harry Clay, manager of the
San Francisco Visitors Information Center.
"THEY'RE YOUNG, isolated and
naive-and much less aware of the church's
recruitment techniques," says Jerry
Stuchiner, an investigator for the San Fran-
cisco INS office.
Pressure from Unification Church leaders
to recruit foreigners is said to have increased
dramatically over the past year, as the ranks
of American members have been depleted by
the wave of bad publicity surrounding cults in
general and the Unification Church in par-
ticular.
"In a year or two, we'll be dealing only with,
foreigners," says one East Coast
deprogrammer.
The church's foreign recruits are mostly
white, middle class, from English-speaking
countries and Europe.
THEY ARE students and professionals,
some of them from very wealthy families.
Particularly noticeable are young people
from England, Ireland, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, White South Africa, the
Netherlands and West Germany. There is a
sprinkling of others from France and Scan-
dinavia.
Unification Church recruiters often ap-
proach them through front organizations,
such as Project Volunteer and the campus-
based Collegiate Association for the Research
of Principles operating at airports, bus
stations, and popular tourist spots.
Their efforts are focused primarily on the
San Francisco Bay Area, but they also are ac-
tive in Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York and
other major American cities.
AFTER BEING indoctrinated in a
Unification Church camp (and having out-
stayed their tourist visas), the recruits are
put to work in one of the church's various en-
terprises-usually selling flowers and other
objects on the streets of major cities and
suburbs-or recruiting others.
One Dutch girl, for example, was
discovered selling flowers in a Detroit bar at
one o'clock in the morning.
A German woman was deported after she
walked into the Federal Building in San
Francisco and tried to raise money from a
government worker who turned out to be an
immigration official.
ACCORDING TO Ed Carlson, who oversees
INS investigations nationwide, a growing
number of foreign Moonies are showing up
along the Gulf coast between Mobile, Ala.,
and New Orleans, in Virginia Beach, Va., and
Gloucester, Mass.-all locations of Moon's
commercial fishing interests.
Here Moonies are trained to become
fishermen, working for low pay which under-
cuts established local fishing businesses and
produces serious community tensions.
Immigration officials acknowledge that
there is little they can do about Moonie illegal
aliens, however.
ONLY ONE quarter of the estimated 2,000
illegal Moonies are even investigated, accor-
ding to INS headquarters. The INS says it
picks up 75 percent of those it does get leads
on.
Apart from the limitations of budget and
manpower, officials explain, their in-
vestigations are hampered by the "evasive".
tactics of the church. They claim, for exam-
ple, that they have great difficulty gainin
access to Unification Church residences even
when they have evidence that a suspected
illegal alien is there.
In other instances, the church allegedly
moves a member they suspect is under in-
vestigation to a different location.
"I HATE TO say this," says Stuchiner of
the INS San Francisco organization."
Some observers charge that the celebrated
"mass marriages" between American and
foreign Moonies are merely designed to ob-
tain permanent residency status for the
foreign members of the church.
"I remember Moon saying if he has to
marry people on the docks to avoid depor-
tation he will," recalls Steve Hassam, a for-
mer assistant director of the church who now
runs an organization of former members
called Ex-Moon.
The Unification Church emphatically
denies these charges. Kay Cullen, an
assistant director for legal affairs in the
Unification Church's New York headquars
ters, describes the marriages as "sacred'
and says that they are recognized by the INS
as perfectly legitimate.
Cullen, a lawyer from New Zealand, said
that foreign tourists who are recruited here
are advised to apply for a change or extension
of their visas. Failing that, they are advised
to return to their own countries and join a
Unification Church branch there.
Ross wrote this article for Pacific News
Service.
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
MRC and the athletic department
.
To the Daily:
This is to clarify one point in
Andrew Chapman's report on
faculty attitudes toward the
projected Michigan Research
Corporation (Daily, October 24).
Mr. Chapman correctly repor-,
ted my concern that MRC might
gain a degree of independence
from the University comparable
to that of the Athletic Depar-
tment. It is a bit misleading,
however, to characterize the
Board in Control of Inter-
collegiate Athletics as itself "too
independent and ... hard to con-
trol." Indeed, it is to this Board
that the extremely difficult task
of "controlling" the Athletic
Department has been assigned.
The comparison I wished to
make was not between MRC and
this Board, but between MRC and
the Athletic Department itself. It
may be that Mr. Chapman
misunderstood this, or it may b
that I expressed myself poorly in
responding to his questions. Be
that as it may, thank you for
allowing me to make this correc-
tion.
-David A. Hollinger
Professor of History and
Chair, Senate Assembly
Committee on Academic
Affairs
Oct. 26
A Ufer memorial
To the Daily:
I remember listening to Bob
"Meeechigan" Ufer ever since I
So now a generation of kids will
grow up in this state without the
evnprience nf Tfer's famns hnrn
V