Speech #980076232

Ask the gentlemen and ladies who have been assassinated through the violence in El Salvador about their human rights. Ask the people who walk by the soldiers on the streets of El Salvador every day. through the guns that are everywhere in evidence and ask them about their individual freedoms. And ask the refugees who have made their way up through Mexico or however into the confines of this Nation about human rights and see what they say about living in their own community on their land and doing their own thing. And if the gentleman would permit me the privilege of Just one moment. let me. for the record. Include some brief material developed by the House Republican Research Committee in terms of the question of what kind of Impact would this situation have if it turned very badly for the worse in terms of the interests of the United States on the refugee situation. And I say to the gentleman without question that the United States is invariably the preferred final destination of all refugees. Everybody wants to come to the United States for all of the reasons that we know and accept. And It appears that there is a general rule of thumb that you can apply in a simply mathematical exercise regarding the historical trends of refugees coming to this Nation. For example. since Cuba fell to the Communist revolution there has been over I million Cuban citizens come to this Nation. which represents over 10 percent of the Cuban population. And that figure. as a base line percentage. conservatively let us use 8 percent. That is what was done in this study. Now If 8 percent of the nations of Central America were to take the historical route to apply for emigration to the United States or simply emigrate here illegally in some way appear on our shores. within the confines of this Nation. it is estimated that those numbers of persons. as a conservative base. would be 9.030.000. The existing laws of the United States would require this Nation to spend in their support $25.235.000.000 per year and If they came here tomorrow. they would make the existing unemployment rate in this Nation almost 13 percent. Now that is the kind of problem. the magnitude of the problem that the President has addressed. that the gentleman from Florida talked about when he talked in terms of feet people.