Mr. Speaker. as part of the Congressional Call to Conscience Vigil for Soviet Jews. I would like to take time to reflect on the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Mr. Speaker. it is apparent. as we debate the current legislation on immigration. that one freedom Americans tend to assume for all people around the world is the freedom to emigrate. So close is this freedom to our national spirit that when Emma Lazarus wrote her inscription for the Statue of Liberty she called upon the nations of the world to send "your tired. your poor. your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." The spirit of openness contained in these passages says much about us as Americans. It says first of all that we are a land of immigrants. And it also says that we naturally expect that those who desire to leave their country and go to another will be allowed to do so. Unfortunately. not everyone is allowed this opportunity. In the Soviet Union. the freedom to emigrate has been integrated into one of the most perverse political systems ever to darken the human record. What we in the United States assume as a natural inalienable right is flagrantly disregarded in the Soviet Union and. what is even worse. is used for political purposes. On August 1. 1975. in Helsinki.
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