Mr. Speaker. the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on State Department Organization and Foreign Operations. of which I am a member. recently held hearings on the attempted defection by Lithuanian Seaman Simas Kudirka and found negligence at several of the bureaucratic levels involved. During these hearings I noted a lack of sensitivity on the part of the Coast Guard officials involved. both to the human aspects of the case and long historical tradition of the United States regarding political refugees. I stated that the implications of the Kudirka tragedy went far beyond the incident itself. They touched on our whole tradition of the right to asylum.
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refugees