Mr. President. the United States has consistently followed a policy of accepting a disproportionate share of the refugee resettlement burden. We have already accepted about 220.000 Southeast Asian refugees and will accept another 168.000 (210.000 including other refugees) in 1980. The total cost for our foreign and domestic assistance programs for refugees will be over $1 billion in fiscal year 1980. While our assistance efforts are highly commendable. there are limits to what we as one nation can continue to do for the 14 million refugees in the world today. Unfortunately. the resettlement commitments made at the recent Geneva Refugee Conference do not significantly readjust the U.S. resettlement burden. Furthermore. the commitments do little more than take care of the approximately 400.000 refugees who are now in temporary camps. The real crisis will come after the rainy season in Southeast Asia when thousands will again make the effort to flee. Assumptions which used an ultimate resettlement figure of about 1 million are now being seriously questioned by those closely associated with the refugee situation. An article in the Washington Post on August 2. 1979 quotes an Asian diplomat who believes that "the number eventually will be between 4 and 5 million and will include many nonChinese." The magnitude of these numbers and the apparent willingness of other countries to let the United States assume the major burden for these people must cause us to seriously rethink our present openended refugee policy. This policy makes no effort to integrate refugee admissions into a total immigration policy and will be continued by S. 643. which will be taken up after the August recess. I request that the following article be printed in the RECORD.
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Refugee refugee immigration refugees