Speech #990035465

The study. formally known as Project VICTOR. concluded that approximately $18.000.000 leaves the United States monthly for Vietnam. Of this $18.000.000. approximately $9.000.000 per month is tranferred by clandestine methods and the remainder by banks. Project VICTOR has exposed that day after day. in cities all across this country where there are significant concentrations of Vietnamese refugees. they are given no alternative than to take their money to storefronts and backrooms. They must entrust their familys welfare to unregulated currency transfer operators who not only skim off a substantial percentage of the funds. at least that is the testimony. But may also may be acting in the interests of a hostile foreign power. Evidence suggests that Just one minor operation can account for as much as a quarter million dollars per year. In U.S. cities with significantly larger Southeast Asian populations there are cases under investigation that may involve of as much as a quarter million dollars per month from Vietnamese refugees. Mr. Speaker. I believe that Vietnamese people in the United States need to have some means of transferring a reasonable level of funds for humanitarian purposes to family members in Vietnam. without enriching a regime they dislike. and in fact despise. We need to protect them against insidiously involved shadowy underground practices designed soley to bolster tl e SRVNs insatiable need for hard. a substantially hard currency reserve. Vietnamese refugees. like other immigrants who have come to the United States. feel a great responsiblity to those relatives still in their homeland. They send money home because of their deepest commitment to their families. This is a natural outgrowth of a 3.000yearold veneration of the family as a divine principle. It is easy to see why it would be difficult to enjoy the comforts of their new country while the families they had to leave behind are often subject to repressive economic and political conditions. It is tragic to hear a refugee lament that when he sends $100 to his wife. she will actually get very little of it. Yet he keeps sending the money because. even if she gets just $10. that is of some assistance. Or to hear a refugees sad story that his 9yearold daughter. gravely ill with rheumatic fever. receives a cable from his wife for money. but the little girl died 4 days later before the money arrived. The 1984 Treasury study concluded that: The problems under examination are not simple problems and there are no simple answers to the many questions we have raised. Indeed. the only simplicity we can find is our simple. moral duty to protect the Vietnamese people in the United States from exploitation originating both from within their community and abroad. Mr. Speaker. we in the United States should not allow cold. cynical manipulation of those Vietnamese refugees who have sought the protection that our democracy affords. Nor should we permit the continued operation of underground centers which exist for the sole purpose of abusing our new neighbors. Moreover. in light of the high welfare dependency rate among these newly arrived refugees. the Federal Government has additional interest in stopping this intolerable problem. The legislation that Senator AiMSTROMO and I have introduced proposes that there be established in the Treasury of the United States the Vietnam Humanitarian Remittance Fund. consisting soley of money paid in by Vietnamese refugees who wish to send such sums to their relatives abroad. Upon implementation the Secretary of the Treasury shall issue notes drawn on amounts held in the fund which are payable to designated individual recipients in -Vietnam. No note thus issued may be redeemed out of the Treasury unless it is accompanied by a declaration signed by both the recipient and a responsible official of the State Bank of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam which attests to the amount of funds actually received by the designated recipient. that the recipient has actual use of all the funds which were sent. that no duress was employed in soliciting the funds or in obtaining the recipients signature. and the lack of any special taxation or denial of human rights imposed on the recipient in connection with the redemption of this note.