Speech #870299426

There is one point which. perhaps. should have been made in the course of this discussion which unfortunately was not made. I refer to the fact that. since the mass exodus from Hungary in the closing months of 1956. Yugoslavia has been the chief refugeeproducing country in Europe. Because of the tendency to regard Yugoslavia as a different and more benign kind of communism. as a kind of communism that stands somewhere between Soviet communism and Western democracy. there has been a parallel tendency to regard the Yugoslav refugees not as refugees from political tyranny but simply as economic migrants seeking better job opportunities in other countries. In consequence. the Yugoslav refugees have been subjected to infinitely more rigid screening than have refugees emerging from Poland and Czechoslovakia and other Iron Curtain countries. It is estimated that approximately half of them are returned to Yugoslavia against their will. while many more are denied the special protection and privileges that are accorded to those escapees who qualify for recognition as political refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It has unfortunately also had the effect of relegating them to the bottom of the totem pole as far as assistance from the U.S. escapee program is concerned. It is my hope. Mr. President. that this injustice will be eliminated and that refugees from Titos Yugoslavia will in the future be accorded the same consideration and treatment as refugees from other Communist countries. From discussions with many people who have had firsthand contact with the problem. I am convinced that the men and women who escape from Yugoslavia do so for the same combination of motives that impell the escape of refugees from other Communist governments. They are motivated in part by economic hardshipbut even this economic hardship is a peculiar feature of Communist oppression. They are motivated. too. in most cases by the persecution of religion and by the total lack of personal freedom.