Mr. President. I rise today to introduce a joint resolution calling upon the Soviet Union to immediately grant permission to emigrate to all Soviet citizens married to U.S. citizens who wish to exercise their right to be reunited with their spouses in the United States. The Soviet Union promised to resolve such cases when it signed the Helsinki accords on Since the Soviet Union joined 34 other nations including the United States and Canada in adhering to the final act of the conference on security and cooperation in Europe. better known as the Helsinki accords. the United States and other Western nations have had continually to press the Soviet Union to keep its commitments. The key to the problem is the fact that the Soviet Union is a totalitarian police state and that it places a top priority on maintaining total control over its citizens. Only since General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev announced his new thinking. including aspects which have become known in the West as glasnost. or openness. perestroika. or restructuring and democratizatsiya. or democratization. have the most brutal Soviet practices moderated. We have celebrated with Natan Sharansky. Yuri Orlov. and other refuseniks and dissidents as those persons who are best known in the West have been released from prison. labor camp. or internal exile. and. in some cases. have been granted permission to emigrate. We have watched with interest the phenomena of public discussion in official media of topics which were formerly unmentionable. or tolerance of the act of organizing public demonstrations. even though those demonstrations were contained and further activity was officially discouraged. and of tolerance of certain Samizdat publications critical of official policies. The Western media have given prominent coverage to these events. leading to the impression that the Soviet Union is at least beginning to make its practices conform with its international human rights commitments.
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