Speech #1000128223

Speaker. I rise in full support of this resolution. House Joint Resolution 376. which calls upon the Soviet Union to immediately grant permission to emigrate to all of those persons in the Soviet Union who desire to join their spouses in the United States. Mr. Speaker. the Helsinki accords. to which the Soviet Union is a signatory. full recognizes the basic right of family reunification and states that special consideration should be given to emigration applications filed by divided families. The Soviet Union has seemingly ignored this fact in the case of at least 15 couples. where they have refused to grant exit visas or marriage permits to Soviets who have a spouse in the United States. In fact. in one case. Galina Goltzman Michelson has been separated from her husband Anatoly Michelson. an American citizen. for more than 30 years. This resolution focuses special attention on this tragic injustice. Clearly. we are getting mixed signals of late from the Soviet Union. On the one hand they preach glasnost and are anxious to focus world attention on the increased number of Soviet Jews who have been allowed to emigrate this year. On the other. we hear of threats of criminal penalties for Latvians who would dare celebrate their shortlived independence of long ago. We know of thousands of Soviet Jews who have been trying to leave the Soviet Union for years and are continually denied that right.