Speech #1010026079

I. too. rise today to appeal for freedom for the people who have been persrcuted for so many years in the Soviet Union. However. I rise today not only to beseech the Soviet Union to expand and legalize their human rights reforms. but to implore Members of Congress and the administration to rectify the injustice that has been perpetrated on these people once they finally do receive permission to emigrate. Soviet Jewish emigres now face additional obstacles from the United States. The administration has changed the longstanding United States policy to grant all Soviet Jews and religious minorities refugee status on the presumption that a Soviet Jew. by the fact that he/she lived in the Soviet Union had suffered from political persecution. This decision has left many Soviet Jewish emigres stranded citizenless on the shores of the Mediterranean in Ladispoli. Italy. It has also sent a dangerous signal to President Gorbachev about the sincerity of our commitment to the free emigration of Soviet Jewry. These refuseniks have been living with fear. discrimination. and multiple persecution in their homeland brought on solely by their religious beliefs. They have been given our assurances of freedom during our visits with them in the Soviet Union. They have been the pivotal point of our diplomatic polemics and our foreign policy. Summit after summit. weve been arguing. negotiating. and conditioning our agreements with the Soviet Union on the basis of this groups right to emigrate. Now. refugee status is granted only if in the course of a 15minute interview with largely untrained United States Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. Soviet refugees can prove a wellfounded fear of political persecution. According to Robert Eddy. chief INS official in Rome. the new policys Implication Is that discrimination no longer amounts to political persecution. This Is tantamount to shifting the burden of proof to the victims. whose understanding of the process as well as their understanding of English is usually insufficient to create testimonial quality evidence on their behalf. Therefore. over 2.400 individual cases of Soviet Jews have recently been denied refugee visas on the pretext that they do not fit the precise. new. glasnostsanitized definition of a political refugee. Today there remain 294 citizenless people who have been double denied and wait on refugee row for the only hope they have: a retroactive policy reversal. Why? What has changed?