THE AMERICAS: Moving On

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The cozy colony for retired dictators in Ciudad Trujillo is breaking up. Argentina's Juan Perón, who cannot get a U.S. visa, last week reserved space for himself and his young blonde secretary, Isabel Martinez, on a flight from Puerto Rico to Madrid. He canceled out when he could get no assurance of exemption from U.S. immigration and customs during the short stopover in San Juan, but presumably will try again by some other route.

Venezuela's ex-Strongman Marcos Pérez Jiménez has already moved his wife and four daughters to four $60-a-day suites in Miami Beach's Sans Souci Hotel, has a visitor's visa that will let him enter the U.S. any time. His No. 2 man, former Security Police Chief Pedro Estrada, is lying low somewhere in the U.S., having entered on an immigrant's visa.

The New York Times last week deplored the fact that "unwelcome guests" can "prance easily into our midst while hundreds of thousands of worthier souls are barred altogether." But U.S. law lets Latin Americans immigrate without a quota. Political asylum seekers are tested for: pauperism, subversion, moral turpitude. Neither Pérez Jiménez nor Estrada is anywhere near broke; the strongman is said to have squirreled away $250 million. Neither has Communist or Fascist ties, nor has either plotted against the succeeding government (the ground for denying Perón a U.S. visa). Neither is technically guilty of moral turpitude, i.e., convicted of a crime. Both reportedly expect to settle in or near Washington.