Speech #930053815

President. I would like to share with my colleagues a letter to the U.S. Congress from 309 Soviet Jews deprived of their right to emigrate on socalled secrecy grounds. The existence of such a letter addressed both to Representative WILBUR MILLs and to me. as the sponsors of the EastWest trade and freedom of emigration amendment in the House and the Senate. was reported by the western press in early March. but it has just reached my office through the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in New York. Although the letter deals in part with the nowsuspended head tax on emigration. it is nevertheless timely because it exposes the sham "secrecy" argument which Soviet authorities have found so convenient an excuse for denying emigration in the absence of the tax. The letter points out that if there are precise regular criteria for determining "secrecy" restrictions. they are themselves secret and can be applied as broadly or as narrowly as the Soviet authorities choose. The writers apprehension that "our situation is becoming worse" and that "further repressive measures" might be employed against Soviet Jews has. unfortunately. been proven to be wellfounded. In this connection. I would like to call the attention of the Senate to another letter. which was written by an American recently returned from the Soviet Union and which appeared in the New York Times on May 16. The author of the letter stresses the need "to destroy the straw dog of the education tax and to point out that the real issue is that Jews who seek visas to leave the Soviet Union are denied them in most cases." Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent to print this material in the RECORD.