Speech #940052805

Mr. President. I have been surprised and saddened by the unexpected national controversy that has arisen over the refugees who fled South Vietnam in the last moments of its existence. and who now wish to settle in the United States. We must put this divisive and degrading debate behind us and set about the business of welcoming these newest immigrants and integrating them as productive members of our society. The war in Vietnam is. thank God. finally ended after 30 years of bloodshed and destruction. Whether the United States was right or wrong to enter that war is something we will never really know. At the end. most of us had become firmly convinced that our involvement was wrong. and should be ended. But the fact remains that for a decade. our country contributed in a mindboggling degree to the warfare that devastated much of South Vietnam. The 130.000 or so refugees who fled their homeland even as the last shots were being fired may well be the wars last victims. Many of them were people who worked with or for the United States and who would almost certainly fare very badly at the hands of the Communist victors. Others are members of the middle or upper class who could afford to buy their way out of Saigon. Still others are just ordinary Vietnamese who for reasons of their own felt compelled to flee to an unknown fateleaving possessions. homes. friends. and familiesrather than live under the new government. And the total number of Vietnamese seeking to enter our country is small compared to. for example. the 675.000 Cubans whom we have absorbed. The Cuban refugees have proven to be excellent citizens and an asset rather than a liability. The same is true of every other refugee group that has ever sought asylum on our shores and the same. I am sure. will be true of the Vietnamese. Mr. President. much has been made of the fact that Congressional mail in the last week or so has run heavily against the Vietnamese refugees. But I would like to point out that my own mailreflecting the sentiments of 7.2 million New Jerseyanshas been very light. And in the last few days I have noticed an increasing trend of letters from people reacting in a positive way to reports of opposition to the refugees. For example. a woman in Upper Montclair wrote: Despite our own financial problems. the United States surely owes humanitarian aid to the South Vietnamese refugees. After all they were to some extent pawns in the U.S. foreign policy maneuvers. It would be unconscionable to refuse It. A man in Leonia said: I believe that in the long run the great majority of the American public will accept these newest immigrants in the spirit in which we accepted Hungarian and Cuban political refugees. I make no value judgments on any of these people. or on their motivations in fleeing South Vietnam. If our tragic involvement in Vietnam has taught us anything. it is that we are in no position to tell others how they ought to live. But it is absolutely unthinkable that the United States of Americathe Nation of immigrantsthe haven of peoples seeking new livesthe refuge of the oppressed and the persecutedwould slam its door in the face of this relatively handful of homeless people. We Americans are making much of the fact that next year we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of our Nations birth. I suggest that a fitting way to mark that occasion is to reaffirm some of the traditions that we are so proud of. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once told a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution: Remember. remember always that all of us . . . are descended from immigrants. Mr. President. it is important that all Americans understand they have nothing to fear from the new Vietnamese immigrants. It is true that we are facing very difficult economic conditionsconditions that we in Congres are working hard to change. But the addition of perhaps 30.000 jobseekers to our economy will not materially affect the unemployment problem or the chances for any individual American who is unemployed to get a job.