Speech #1000133872

With such discouraging religious circumstances. not to mention the abhorrent treatment that the Jews receive from the government. many Jews choose to leave their homeland to practice their religion in their spiritual homeland. Israel. Most Jews who apply to emigrate are not allowed to leave. Since 1979. when a record 51.000 Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union. the number of Jews permitted to leave has been drastically reduced. with only 914 leaving last year. While I am encouraged by the sharp increase in emigration permissions this year. the number 6.000 pales in comparison to the estimated 380.000 Jews who would like to leave the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government has erected numerous barriers to emigration. including the stipulation of family reunification as a requirement for emigration. In addition. many applicants are refused on the basis of alleged secret work that they have done for the government. regardless of the fact that in many cases the work was conducted far in the past and was long since obsolete. Many people refused for this reason have never even had access to classified information. Refuseniks now number over 10.000 people. In Congress. we often hear of Soviet Jews seeking emigration permissionBenjamin Charney. whose family resides in the United States. suffers from malignant cancer and heart disease that can only be treated in the West. Dr. Semyon Gluzman. sentenced to 7 years of hard labor and 3 years internal exile in Siberia because he refused to brand human rights activists and political dissidents as mentally ill. Dr. Naum Meiman. founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Committee. Alexander Lerner. a computer scientist who has been kept from holding any academic or research post since he applied for emigration 15 years ago. Abe Stolar. raised in Chicago. who followed his parents to Russia in 1931 but now wants to return with his family to the land of his birththese are just a handful of the thousands who seek to live their lives in freedom and be reunited with their families. In our Nation. where religious freedom is taken for granted. it is easy to turn our backs on the problems of a nation that we often consider our adversary.