President. today I am honored to be a participant in the second congressional fast and prayer vigil for Soviet Jewry. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan and his distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania for their hard work in organizing this fast and vigil. No one in Congress can be unfamiliar with the downward spiral in Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. Many. however. may be unaware of the precise. dangerously low levels to which emigration figures have shrunk. Mr. President. the grim figures speak for themselves. In 1983. only 1.315 Jews were able to leave the Soviet Union so that they might freely practice their religion. This figure represents a 98percent reduction in emigration from 1979. In 5 short years. the Soviet Union has constructed legal and administrative walls. as solid and hard as those of any real prison. around the Jewish population. In the first quarter of this year. only 229 Jews were allowed to emigrate. It appears 1984 will prove a sad replay of As the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry points out. the growth of the AntiZionist Committee in the U.S.S.R. parallels the restrictive emigration measures exhibited by that country. We in the Western World know that there are thousands of Jews in the U.S.S.R. who wish to emigrate. yet the AntiZionist Committee states that all Soviet Jews that wish to leave have already done so. The Soviet Union would have us believe that there is no religious persecution of Jews practicing their faith. If that is so. why must so many say their prayers in the darkness of their homes. instead of the light of the synagogue?
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emigrate emigration