Speech #940056969

Chairman. I would like to report on the views of my constituents in Detroit. Contrary to the report of the previous Member. there has not been a dramatic reversal by 10 to 1 in favor of approving millions of dollars of refugee aid. The citizens in Detroit are not nonhumanitarian or antiVietnamese. They do not feel that we should refuse to open our doors to people from any country escaping for their very lives. as we have traditionally done for true refugees in times past. But they are not at all certain that the more than 100.000 persons just brought in from Vietnam are really political refugees in the accurate sense of the word. We are bringing in thousands of children who certainly are not fleeing from persecution. And we are bringing in adults whose lives were no more endangered than the relatives they left behind. In fact. both the North and South Vietnamese Governments have requested the return of these. and have even promised secure homes for the children. By encouraging and maintaining these "refugees" in the United States. however. we will be filling childless American homes with foreign youngsters while thousands of our own orphans languish in institutions waiting for adoption. And we will be increasing the competition for the few job openings with the sudden addition of from 35.000 to 70.000 Vietnamese applicants to the millions of U.S. job searchers already becoming frustrated in their attempts to find work. The decision we are being called upon to make ultimately revolves around the question of how best we can spend the several hundreds of millions of dollars now under debate. Should we spend them on Vietnamese "refugees" or should we spend them on Detroit "refugees." who by the hundreds of thousands are without work or any job prospect. The immediate bill before this one was the acceptance of the conference report on a budget which countenanced an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent on its opening page. Since we first began debating that conference report and bill. the unemployment rate has continued to go up.