I am proud to join my colleagues today in honoring a man of conscience and extraordinary courageAnatoly Shcharansky. His struggle to speak out on behalf of the refusenik movement in the Soviet Union deserves the praise of free people everywhere. Yet at the same time as we honor Anatoly Shcharansky. let us take this occasion to remember the 14.000 Soviet Jews who have been refused exit visas and remain in the U.S.S.R. against their will. Let us remember the thousands upon thousands of Soviet Jews who have taken the first step toward emigrating to Israel and are paying for the opening of the gates that bar their freedom. Unfortunately. the arbitrary and insensitive government in Moscow that controls their fate has chosen to reduce the flow of emigrants from the U.S.S.R. to a trickle. This state of affairs is clearly unacceptable. and each of us needs to do all that is possible to change it. I. like many of my colleagues. have adopted a refusenik family. and I look to the day when the Raiz family of Vilnus can escape the fetters that today bind their fate.
Keywords matched
visas emigrants emigrating