Probably the most important thing that the Senator from Missouri was concerned about was whether or not any change at all in our policy would send some signals to those countries that would be detrimental to efforts to alleviate these situations. He mentioned the question of repatriation. Has the United States ever taken any strong action to help repatriate refugees? If we have I am not familiar with it. The fact is that it has been the U.S. refugee policy that has been the largest impediment to repatriation of refugees. Repatriation would be a very important factor in helping to solve the refugee problem. Returning to ones own country under the proper circumstances in most cases would put that individual in better circumstances than going to a strange country. Our policy of open door refugee acceptance is the policy that has been the most detrimental to a real repatriation effort by other countries of the world. The Senator from Missouri is worried about international cooperation and indicated that our liberal policy of increasing refugee admissions from 7.000 a month to 14.000 a month was somehow going to inspire the rest of the world to do likewise. The facts are exactly the opposite. The rest of the world has done less and the United States has done more. By the end of this year under the present pace we will have admitted more than the rest of the world put together. including Red China. We are not solving any of the real refugee problems. The numbers we take. as large as they are. are just a drop in the bucket. We are not solving the problems of refugees around the world. not in Cambodia. Vietnam. Cuba. or anywhere else. I know. through a personal conversation that I have had with a member of the Presidents Cabinet who was in Russia at the time of the Cambodian difficulties. of the lack of cooperation. He asked Mr. Brezhnev if he would not get his government to help with the unfortunate Cambodian refugees. Do Senators know what the response was? He laughed at him.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees