Speech #930227297

provides legal protection for refugees. He arranges Immediate relief assistance. guards refugees against enforced repatriation. encourages governments to grant them asylum. and assists in their resettlement in new countries. His operations often are conducted in cooperation with other internatioanl or national refugeerelief programs. Still another is our participation in the work of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration. known as ICEM. This body. made up of 31 free nations. was established in 1951. and since then has assisted in the movements of more than 2 million people. refugees and migrants. to new homes in new countries. Finally. my office conducts direct programs established by our Government according to unilateral American humanitarian and foreign policy objectives. Our Far East Refugee Program was established in 1954 to help the hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees who fled to Hong Kong and Macao. Working through voluntary agencies. FERP has helped in the enormous task of supplying shelter. food and medical care. It provides job training and student scholarships. and assists and counsels those of the refugees who are emigrating to the United States. Vocational schools. hospitals. housing developments in Hong Kong and Macao owe their existence in part to this program. An operation I would like to discuss in a little more detail is the United States Refugee Program. USRP dates back to a time of great human suffering abroad. The World War II organizations for assisting displaced persons had gone out of business. But communist oppression was generating new waves of refugees from Eastern Europe. The only havens these unfortunates could find were desolate and rundown camps left over from the war. in Greece. Austria.