Speaker. I am proud to be a participant in the 1984 Congressional Call to Conscience Vigil for Soviet Jews. Since 1968. more than 600.000 Soviet Jews have requested and received invitations from Israel to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Since that time. only 263.851 have actually been allowed to emigrate. This means that there is an excess of more than 300.000 Soviet Jews who desire to emigrate but have been denied the opportunity to do so by the Soviet Government. Overall. there has been a 98percent decline in Jewish emigration since 1979 and that trend is continuing this year. Of even greater concern than these alarming figures. though. is the fact that Soviet Jews expressing an interest in emigration have been subject to constant harassment and denial of basic human rights. There are restrictions on Jewish university enrollment. job opportunities are denied to many Soviet Jews. and leading Jewish activists have been arrested merely because they conduct unofficial Hebrew classes. All of us are aware of the many individual cases of Soviet Jews who are harassed. oppressed. and separated from their families. On a regular basis. our attention is called to new cases of refuseniks who are denied the right to emigrate and then treated as something less than human beings merely because they want to be with their loved ones. The names are different. but the heartless humiliation and abuses are always the same. Soviet Jews do not have the opportunity to speak out against these atrocities themselves.
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emigrate emigration