Speech #960255248

The American people did not know. I do not believe that the executive branch knew until an amendment was added to an act earlier this year at my request which required the President to submit to the Congress the total figure. I recall that as the Appropriations Committee marked up the appropriations bill the year before. the chairman brought up the question of the increased cost of refugee assistance. He said that we ought to do something about it because if it kept going like it was. it was probably going to get up to $500 million or $600 million a year. and maybe sometime in the future even to $800 million. In my amendment. the administration finally did begin to ferret through the agencies involved in this activity. We found out. scheduled to be spent in 1980. not $500 million. but $1.7 billion. That was before the influx of the Cubans who will add several hundred million dollars to that. So. for 1980. we probably will spend over $2 billion for refugee assistance of the American taxpayers money. Scheduled to be spent in 1981 was $2.1 billion. That. of course. will increase substantially. if the present influx of Cubans is determined to be refugees because they then will qualify for all the assistance programs available to them. We are really talking about substantial numbers of people and substantial numbers of taxpayer dollars. I was reading the Associated Press news ticker just a couple of hours. There were two items of particular interest. one relating to the Cuban refugees that I am not even going to mention here. except to say that as many as 30 percent of those Cubans sent to this shore by Fidel Castro would not qualify under the U.S. immigration lawsas many as 30 percent. I point that out to indicate to what extent the Congress and the President have abdicated the immigration oolicy to dictators who reign in various coun tries around the world. The other item I thought was perti nent to this particular debate is that thi Labor Department has reported toda that 675.000 jobless people filed for first. time unemployment claims last week. Ul 50.000 from the week before and equalinE the record highthe record highin th history of this country.