Speech #990184848

Pentecostals. Germans. Armenians. and a host of other religious and nationalistic minorities who wish to emigrate or freely practice their religion and ethnic heritage. Mr. President. Soviet emigration policies amount to repressionpure and simple. The process for obtaining formal permission for emigration is extremely cumbersome and designed to discourage applications. Family reunification is the only recognized legal basis for individuals and families seeking exit visas. Several years ago I and a number of my colleagues were in the Soviet Union and we met with many of the socalled refuseniks. those who wanted to leave the country who had committed no crime. who had taken no actions against their country except that they wanted to be reunited with their families in other parts of the world. And they were told not only that they could not leave but. the mere fact that they had applied for a visa was sufficient basis to cause them to lose their jobs. We met mathem.ticians. we met engineers. we meet people trained in the professions who wanted nothing more than to be able to leave their countrya right which I might point out is guaranteed them under a document to which the Soviets have affixed their signature. the Helsinki accords. But under rules implemented in 1979. only those people with firstdegree relatives presently in the West are eligible for emigration. That is not the way the Helsinki accords reads. And I for the life of me have difficulty in understanding the Soviet Union on this issue. Wouldbe emigrants in the Soviet Union today characteristically face the obstacle of Soviet bureaucracy and long delays. Their applications are subject to the arbitrary decisions of Soviet authorities who may have no standard emigration procedure to guide their actions. Should the applicant be fortunate enough to obtain initial approval. the ultimate success of his or her appeal will depend on the current state of affairs between the two superpowers. Now. why?