Speech #900243565

Mr. Speaker. I am today introducing legislation to amend Public Law 89236. the Immigration and Nationality Act. to correct an inequity concerning the immigration of refugees into the United States. The law currently provides that victims of Communist persecution must go to a nonCommunist county of which they are not nationals to apply for entry into the United States. In retrospect. it is not clear what purpose this requirement was meant to serve. It imposes a highly technical and unduly restrictive definition upon the concept of the refugee. in assuming that one must already have fled his country to qualify for admission into the United States. Surely. reality does not correspond to this condition. I am thinking of the Jews of Poland. many of whom have become refugees within their own country. They have been singled out and become a persecuted minority. They are. of course. denied the opportunity to flee to other lands. But surely they are refugees in all but a highly legalistic sense. One of the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Mr. Speaker. is to provide humanitarian relief for the victims of oppression. But it is unjust that we require them to escape from their country before we will help them. It is. of course. also unrealistic. My bill would redefine the second category within the seventh preference in the 1965 Immigration Act. It would continue to offer assistance to victims of racial. religious or political persecution but it would eliminate the purposeless requirement that they apply for entry from some country other than that which commits the persecution. In other words. if the oppressive government of a Communist country allows its victims to leave. we will not apply exotic standards for refusing to accept them. We will accept them within this seventh preference without further ado. There are plenty of places available under Polands remaining immigration quota. It requires no Presidential proclamation to increase the quota. and my amendment would not change the total of authorized immigration. But most of the Jews who would immigrate to this country fail to qualify under the first six preferences in the act and are excluded by a technicality under the seventh. It is that technicality that I would seek to amend. I know my colleagues sympathize with the plight of the Jews in Poland.