In Vienna. at the followup meeting of the conference on security and cooperation in Europe. the United States has documented in depth and in detail these Soviet violations of their Helsinki human rights commitments. Our allies and neutral and nonaligned states have joined with us in this effort to get the Soviets to keep their word. so far without more than cosmetic success. Let me call to the attention of this body that last year the Soviet Union allowed only 914 Jews to emigrate. This is down from 1.140 in 1985. a year in which our relations with the Soviet Union were supposedly more tense than they were in 1986. The Soviet record in this regard is particularly poor in light of the fact that they allowed 51.320 Jews to emigrate in 1979. And there are at least 380.000 Jews in the Soviet Union who have taken the first step toward emigration by requesting and receiving a vyzov. or affidavit. from Israel. These people desperately want to leave and the Soviets wont let them. Not only that. they persecute mercilessly those who have the courage to try.
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emigrate emigration