Mr. President. for several years I have been saying that the U.S. refugee resettlement program has been expanded beyond the letter and intent of the law. This has become more obvious during the last 2 years. when the U.S. Department of State attempted to classify all economic migrants from Indochina as refugees who would be eligible for resettlement in the United States. Even though a Presidential report in 1980 revealed that American taxpayers were spending over $2 billion a year on refugee assistance. the State Department continued to push for massive resettlement of Indochinese economic migrants in the United States. In order to keep this massive resettlement program operating while appearing to cut costs. the administration simply shifted more of the costs to the State and local governments. The result of this overzealous policy is that of the 587.149 Indochinese who have been admitted. over 300.000 are receiving some kind of public assistance. A GAO report recently found that 71 percent of the refugees of employable age had registered for public assistance and that most of these had done so within 30 days of entry. Notwithstanding this. the administration still plans to admit about 100.000 additional refugees next year. in addition to the 140.000 that will probably be brought in this year. The true tragedy of this refugee policy was revealed in an article in the Washington Post entitled. "Federal Aid Reductions Spur Refugees to Flee Pacific Northwest." I ask that this article be printed in the RECORD. The article referred to follows: [From the Washington Post. June 8. 1982]
Keywords matched
Refugees refugee migrants refugees