Speech #970030668

Mr. Speaker. last week we in Congress held a vigil on the treatment received by many Jewish "refuseniks" in the Soviet Union. I. for one. am convinced that the U.S.S.R.s restrictive emigration procedures are of great concern to the entire free world. Time after time I have seen evidence of many individuals and families who have been refused emigration permits by officials of the Soviet Government. At any given time. there are 50.000 applications for exit visas pending from Jewish people alone. But in 1979. for example. while 176.000 Jews applied for permission to emigrate. only 51.300 exit visas were granted. These figures are shocking enough. However. what occurred in the following years is worse. In 1980. 21.774 Jews were granted exit visas. although the number of applications did not decrease from the previous year. In 1981. through the first week in May. 4.800 of these people have left the Soviet Union. At that rate. only 12.000 to 14.000 will be allowed to leave during 1981. bringing the number of granted visas to a low unheard of since 1972. Thousands of people have applied for these exit visas twice a year. Many. such as Anatoly Shcharansky. are famous. Many are not. Another disgraceful situation begins immediately after the Jewish individual applies for an exit visa. At that time. he loses his job and cannot find another. In many cases. this has given the Soviet Government officials leeway to arrest and convict the refusenik for parasitism. Since it is government action that causes the refusenik to lose his job in the first place. this entire situation is grossly unfair. Discrimination by any government against those who wish to emigrate must end. All those who wish to leave the U.S.S.R.-no matter what their religionmust have the right to choose where they want to live and under what government. I join many of my colleagues in Congress in calling for an end to violations of human rights by the Soviet Union.*