President. the amendment that the Senator offers is entirely agreeable to me. I would urge the Senate to accept it. It identifies the areas of special responsibility which we. as a country. would feel about those refugees. It seems to me that makes commonsense. It has been our past tradition in terms of refugee circumstancesthat Is barring the other kinds of inhibitions which have existed in refugee policy. The idea of a report and a hearing is completely acceptable. I hope the members of the committee would accept this amendment. What we have attempted to do in the other provisions of the legislation is to require the administration to set out before the beginning of the fiscal year. what the expectation is going to be over the period of the year so that Congress would have some degree of understanding as to the numbers of refugees to be admitted. That does not exist at the present time. Obviously. by the nature of the subject matter we are considering today. it is not always easy to do this because of the nature of the problem of refugees. Refugee movements do not rise and fall according to a Senate budget calendar or the appropriations process. But. to the best of their judgment the administration is trying to estimate the nature of future refugee needs so that the Members of the Senate will know those facts early in our budgetary process. The Senator from Kentucky wants to insure that we have a hearing on these special requests. That seems to be entirely desirable. that the information be available to the Senate. that a report be made.
Keywords matched
Refugee refugee refugees