Mr. President. the bill which I am introducing today to provide resettlement and humanitarian assistance t(. refugees from Indochina. differs in at least four ways from the bills already introduced. First. The bill would limit the administrations aid request to $127.000.000 for a period of 3 months following the date of enactment of this bill. Second. This legislation would require that at the end of the 2 months. the administration report to Congress exactly how they are spending the refugee funds. how much more they need. and exactly why they need it. It requires a plan by the administration. Third. It would provide funds to any Vietnamese or Cambodian refugee who has had a change of heart and who wishes to return to his or her homeland. Finally. the bill would set a 1year moratorium on all hiring by any U.S. intelligence agency or the Department of Defense of refugees who participated in the Operation Phoenix program. The administration is using the figure of $507 million. in addition to the $98 million already appropriated for the Vietnamese refugees. The bills already introduced. however. provide for unlimited and openended funding for the Presidents program. If we accept about 130.000 refugees as the reports now stateand incidentally. I might add. Mr. President. that just yesterday. the administration announced its intention to increase its parole authority to 150.000the sum requested by the administration breaks down to approximately $4.000 per person. or $16.000 for a family of fourwhich is a great deal more than needy Americans receive from any Government agency and infinitely more than we proposed in the farm bill which the President found "inflationary." Furthermore. we have preliminary reports that a large percentage of these refugees speak English and have American sponsors who have pledged to be responsible for them. Because of our involvement and complicity in the war. it would be unfair and certainly errant to turn our backs on these people now that our involvement has ended. We ought to help the legitimate refugees. just as we have helped the hundreds of thousands of refugees from other parts of the world In years passed. What we ought not to do is to commit ourselves unnecessarily to a plan which is ased on emotionalism and hastily pre- b ared plans and statistics. There is no h ogical reason why this Congress must v ommit itself all the way through 1977 r o decisions made within a few days line. It is highly unusual for Congress n o commit itself this far in advance. d specially in a case such as this where s nany questions regarding the future are till unanswered. The State Department. t or example. has indicated that a few refugees have indicated that they would 8 ike to return to their homeland. There t nay be more. and it should be the re- s .ponsibility. of the U.S. Government to provide this kind of assistance to ref- t igees as well. The administration has failed to com- t pile adequate data on the refugees and t continues to provide inadequate and sketchy reports to Congress as to their Progress. But more important are the administrations appeals on behalf of refugees which in effect cover up for its behavior during the final shabby chapter of our involvement in Vietnam. Even though the fall of the Thieu government was seen as inevitable. the administration. through the Embassy in Saigon. did not prepare for an orderly evacuation as did our allied governments. Instead. It spread confusion and panic. well reported by CBS Ed Bradley. Many of these refugees could have remained in Vietnam. as Senator MCGOVERN has so cogently explained. had a clear policy been followed by the administration. But just as we bungled into Vietnam. so we seem to have bungled out of it. ruining lives and upsetting possibilities for future reconciliation with the Vietnamese people. This administration has turned its back on humanitarian aid for American farmers by vetoing Congress farm bill. by trying to extort additional money from the poor and elderly for food stamps. and by labeling various other congressional proposals to help Americans inflationary. This administration turned its back on refugees from fascism and barbarism In Chile and other countries. it shows little interest in stopping or protesting the widsepread use of torture practiced by several of our socalled allies. The very people who dropped millions of tons of bombs on Vietnam. many of them hitting civilian targets in the north and south. those same policymakers who defoliated the countryside and pushed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese from their villages. now call on Congress to pass a socalled humanitarian aid measure. We are offering humanitarian aid to thousands of trained political assassins who operated the Phoenix program. for Vietnamese who corrupted their own society using American money. food. and equipment. for prostitutes. bar girls. pimps. and other undesirables. but we have refused asylum in this country for people who have tried to live honestly in other countries. but could not do so because of the antihumanitarian policies of some other governments. most of who obtain support from our Government. I am speaking of Soviet Jews. Palestinian refugees. refugees from Brazil. Chile. and other nations. The same President who says that young Americans must earn their way ack to the United States from Canada as denounced other American citizens rho question admission of Vietnamese efugees.
Identified stereotypes
Characterizing refugees as trained political assassins, prostitutes, bar girls, pimps, and other undesirables.