Speech #980262596

Speaker. I rise today in a call for sanity by the Soviet Union in its treatment of its huge Jewish population. I find it ironic that here in the United States we are in the midst of a growing national debate about immigrants. Our shores are surrounded by political and economic refugees wishing to enjoy the basic freedoms we take for granted: the right to worship. to speak freely and openly. and to assemble. The fact that the United States is considered a safe haven should surprise no one. We are a land of immigrants. a nation founded on the principle of tolerance to its new citizens. When we examine that Soviet Union. however. we find a completely different situation. Soviet soldiers taken a prisoner in Afghanistan refuse to return to Mother Russia. perhaps remembering the barbaric fate that awaited many of the repatriated Soviet soldiers in World War II. Hundreds of Christian believers. most notably the Pentecostalist families which held out for several years in the American Embassy. yearn for the right to free emigration. Thus while America has become the land of immigrants. the Soviet Union has become the land of emigrants. Most tragically. though. is the case of Soviet Jews. Many thousands wait to rejoin families in Israel. the United States. and other countries. The official refusal to emigrate is actually the last stage of a process of oppression and humailiation that the applicant must endure. After they apply for emigration visas. they often find themselves suffering deprivationsthey are removed from their jobs or thrown out of their apartments. They are treated as traitors. which makes even more ominous the recent changes in the Soviet Criminal Code expanding the scope of criminal activities regarded as treasonous. Individual cases help to illuminate the plight faced by Soviet Jews. Boris Braynin. the brother of one of my constituents. graduated from university as a civil engineer. He worked for many years as an engineertechnician for assembling gas turbines. After he applied to emigrate. he lost his job and was forced to become a maintenance man for a heating unit in the basement of a building. He finally was notified that his request had been denied. based on the pretext that his father still lived in the Soviet Union. The cruel truth is that his father had remarried. had another family. and