Speech #930227297

American public opinion. deeply stirred. brought action from a sympathetic Congress. which quickly provided funds for relief and resettlement. What is now known as the United States Refugeq Program was set up in 1952. The flow of refugees has been uneven over the years. but it has been unending. with sharp increases in times of crisis in Eastern Europe. The abortive Hungarian revolt of 1956. for example. brought the precipitous flight to freedom of 200.000 people. In 1968. a flood of Jews fled Poland. in the same year. nearly 50.000 refugees from Czechoslovakia sought asylum in foreign countries. Currently. Jews and others in increasing numbers are being permitted to leave the Soviet Union. 35.000 of them in 1973. While most have gone to Israel. some have come May .6. 1974 to the United States under immigration parole. an arrangement worked out with the assistance of my office. All told. In the past 20 years. the United States Refugce Program has provided care and resettlement for nearly 400.000 people. of whom about twothirds have found new lives in America. However. the normal refugee flow to the U.S. is 10.200 a year under our immigration laws plus those who come in under special parole status. I hope my mention of these programs has not conjured up pictures of platoons and regiments of U.S. Government civil servants swarming into the refugee areas of the world. with offices and secretaries and inboxes and the other trappings of bureaucracy. This. I am happy to say. is not the case. My staff is a small one. concentrated in Washington with outposts in Geneva and Hong Kong. The field operators of U.S. refugee relief. unsung heroes for the most part. are the paid and unpaid workers of the voluntary agencies. some Americans. some recruited from local populations. It is these people who serve In the front lines of refugee assistance. They work almost inevitably in situations of physical hardship. sustainedas I have noted on my frequent trips abroad by dedication to humanitarianism and an enduring belief in what is right and good. My office executes contracts with many of these agencies. these funds usually are spent for such services as care and maintenance transportation and supplies for refugees and migrants. The funds in some cases are augmented by grants of agricultural commodities under the Food for Peace Program. But by far the largest proportion of the resources of the private agencies comes from the millions of generous and compassionate Americans who subscribe to their campaigns. Last year alone. 92 Government accredited voluntary agencies had humanitarian programs in 130 countries. for which they raised from private donors more than $470 million. undeniable evidence of the real and tangible response by Americans to the needs of the lessfortunate around the globe. If you count our domestic effort to assist Cubans who have reached this country. your Government currently is spending about $330 million a year for refugee assistance. But let me not give the impression that we are in this alone. Other countriesDenmark. West Germany. Sweden. Norway. the Netherlandson the basis of population and wealth contribute more than we to international refugee programs. A special case in point is the small. neutral nation of Austria. which for years has upheld principles of human rights and humanitarianism at great financial cost and a great political peril. Austria. as you know. has borders with Czechoslovakia. Hungary and Yugoslavia and is within easy distance of the rest of Eastern Europe. including the Soviet Union. Ever since the end of World War II. refugees from communist oppression have been entering Austria in a steady flow of some thousands of persons a year. interspersed by sudden and dramatic mass arrivals resulting from such events as the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968. Despite their exposed position. the Austrians have never flinched. Austria is avowedly and successfully neutral. But it has placed the needs of human beings and the Importance of meeting their needs on a plane of compassion above the crosscurrents of political controversy. Austria has received refugees in the many hundreds of thousands over the years. And it has joined in programs. Including those we support. to pass the refugees on to other countries for resettlement. Since World War II Austrian taxpayers have spent more than $185 million for these purposes. Both in human and financial terms. it is an admirable and outstanding performance. I am proud that the United States is a leader among the other nations which have helped Austria carry the load. As to specific refugee situations overseas. the most dramatic in recent years came in 19711972. not in Europe but in South Asia. when violence in what was East Pakistan sent Bengalis streaming into India at a rate which sometimes reached 150.000 persons a day. Ultimately there were nearly 10 million of them. huddled in more than a thousand primitive camps. India accepted the burden but appealed to the United Nations for help. and this triggered probably the most intensive relief operation ever mounted. Before it was over. 70 nations and scores of voluntary agencies had contributed commodities and money. a cholera epidemic had been averted. millions of blankets had been supplied. children had been saved from malnutritionwell. it was a great example of world humanitarianism at work. Ultimately. with establishment of Bangladesh. the refugees went home and began to rebuild their lives. The U.S. contribution to this program was more than $90 million in commodities and funds from the government plus $11 million from private sourceswe were the first and largest foreign donor. It was this mammoth crisis which confronted me only weeks after I took officeto find myself projected into the chairmanship of an acrosstheboard Government committee which coordinated the U.S. response. I pride myself that the United States did well. Although not of this magnitude. there have been many other crises in the threeplus years of my term in office. Quite recently. our diplomatic efforts helped to protect alien refugees during and after the revolution in Chile. We have been able to speed the arrival of U.S.-bound Cuban refugees stranded in Spain. In the Sudan. we have helped the U.N. High Commissioner repatriate refugees from that countrys long civil war. In South Asia we presently are assisting what probably is historys largest airlift between Bangladesh and Pakistan. We have joined in the effort to resettle thousands of Asians expelled from Uganda.