I submit that the time to do that is nownow before we make major mistakes with the lives of more than 100.000 persons and arouse new problems with which our own States. localities and citizens will have to cope. This is what this amendment seeks to doit seeks to require that we focus on the numbers. the various situations involved and that we develop a systematic means of dealing with them. I believe that a consensus is developing in this Nationa consensus that acknowledges the responsibility we have to many of these refugees who were forced from their homeland because they associated themselves with us. the responsibility we have accepted so many times in the past of offering those from abroad an alternative way of life. the responsibility of a humane and caring people. At the same time. I think we have to acknowledge that the assimiliation of those from abroad into our Nation has not always been easy. the move beyond the melting pot has not always been accomplished without strainboth for those who arrived and those in the communities into which they went. For the refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. there are special problems which we should admit. These include concerns about new arrivals at a time when our economic and unemployment problems are great. And subconsciously. there is undoubtedly the problem that these persons remind us of the major foreign misadventure of the decadea misadventure which divided our Nation and its people as never before in this century. Nevertheless. we may hope that. despite our problems at home and the difficult task of resolving them. the better rather than the darker side of our nature will persevere on the refugee issue. and that we may provide assistance in line with the bright side of our Nations tradition and ideals. That course need not. however. mean simply the provision of funds in the fond hope that with the money all will work out well. Indeed. it can and should mean much. much more.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees