Speech #930057356

Mr. Chairman. In the bill we are considering today. there is a provision. added by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. that would give $36.5 million in aid to Israel for assistance in the resettlement of Soviet Jewish refugees. Last year. $50 million in aid was appropriated by the Congress for this purpose. Of that amount. only $31 million has been spent to date. The remaining $19 million is scheduled to be transferred to the Israeli Government during fiscal This may seem like a lot of money. However. we should recall that the original amount requested for refugee resettlement was $85 million. A majority of the Members of the House and Senate voted for this $85 million authorization. However. it was reduced by the administration to $50 million. and. as we can see. this greatly reduced amount is being doled out to the Israeli Government in dribs and drabs. The amount proposed by the Committee would restore the resettlement aid to its original level. An overwhelming majorty of us have joined in cosponsorship of the Freedom of Emigration Act. It is sufficient to say that we are all deeply committed to the principles that no one should be harrassed or intimidated because he seeks to express his religious identity. particularly when that means leaving the country of ones birth to emigrate to ones spiritual homeland. This is what the struggle for Soviet Jewry is all about: Simply a fight to enjoy basic human rights. But we should be aware that the problem does not end when the visas are granted. Almost every Jewish emigrant from the Soviet Union leaves that country with hardly more than the clothes on their backs and the few possessions they can cram into a valise. I met a number of these men. women and children at Schonau. the Austrian halfway station where the emigrants are housed for a few days on their way to Israel. Many of them are undergoing a profound "culture shock." They all know that they want to be in Israel. and that Israel means a kind of freedom that they have never before known. They have literally sacrificed their past. their fortunes. in the name of freedom.