Speech #1000002967

During that decade. thousands of Jews were permitted to leave each year. reaching a high water mark of 51.000 in 1979. In contrast. in 1985 and 1986the Gorbachev yearsthe numbers were 1.140 and 916. Yet 400.000 Soviet Jews have taken the first step in seeking emigration. and 11.000 have applied and been denied permission to emigrate to Israel. Thousands have been denied the right to leave on the basis of the fiction that they have been privy to state secrets. Many of the Jews who have applied for permission to emigrate are harassed by the Soviet Government. subjected to the loss of their jobs or even imprisonment. depending on the persistence of their efforts and the caprice of the bureaucracy. And the Soviet Government continues to separate even married couples when one spouse is a Soviet citizen trying to emigrate. Last November. the Supreme Soviet announced a new emigration policy. This new policy limits the right to emigrate to family reunification with immediate relatives. In the past. invitations for unification. have been accepted from grandparents. aunts. uncles and cousins. but that is no longer possible. Moreover. the new policy guarantees nothing even for those who receive an invitation from an immediate relative. because it includes no less than nine reasons for which emigration may be denied. Sadly. as Morris Abram. chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry has written: The decree is no "farreaching effort toward serious reforms." as the Soviet foreign ministry claims. but rather a tightening of existing restrictive practices. The crackdown on Jewish emigration since 1979 probably reflects in some degree a worsening of the United StatesSoviet relationship since Afghanistan. But there is no doubt that the Soviet Government has its own reasons for such blatant denial of the most basic human rights. They unquestionably fear the precedent that uncontrolled emigration would create for other ethnic groups. They probably fear the effect on their economy if all Jews were to leave. Perhaps too they are holding out for what they deem an appropriate quid pro quo from the West. Whatever the reason. Soviet emigration policy continues to represent a direct violation of the Helsinki Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe. the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights. and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. In November. my administrative assistant. Ira Shapiro. was part of a bipartisan delegation to the Soviet Union sponsored by the American Council of Young Political Leaders [ACYPLI.