Speech #1010038671

And. if giving the Soviet Union MFN resulted in the presence of more American goods and services in the U.S.S.R.. that would benefit Soviet citizens who are so short of domestic goods. Clearly. things are changing in the Soviet Union. And emigrationthe issue to which the granting of MFN is expressly linked by JacksonVanikhas greatly improved. It is expected that more than 40.000 Soviet Jews will emigrate in 1989. Added to that are thousands of ethnic Germans. Armenians. and Pentacostals who are being allowed to leave. But obstacles to emigration remain. First. there are still some 600 longterm refusenik families. 7 months after Secretary Gorbachevs encouraging speech before the United Nations in which he claimed he wanted to get the refusenik issue "off the table." Many of these longterm refusenik families are in fact refused because someone In the family allegedly has access to what the Soviets call "state secrets." Even if they did work with classified information. they havent done so fo. many years. some as long as 15 or 20 yea... Moreover. there are no procedures to appeal a secrecy determination. and many have no clue as to how long they will be tagged with the secrecy label. which is nothing more than a subterfuge for not giving permission to leave the Soviet Union. Second. many cant even apply to emigrate because a close relative refuses to relinquish financial claims. These so called poor relative cases do not even make it into the refusal statistics. because their applications to leave are not accepted by emigration officials. And once again there is no legal procedure to challenge the financial claim. JacksonVanik prohibits the granting of MFN to a country which. in the words of the law. "denies its citizens the right or opportunity to emigrate. * * * " While the Soviet Union has greatly improved its emigraticn record. emigration still remains a privilege. as seen by the leaders of the Soviet Union. And as long as it remains a privilege. we need to be cautious with a JacksonVanik waiver. Last November. when I was in the U.S.S.R. with the Helsinki Cominission. Soviet leaders told us they were drafting an emigration law which would address some of our objections. We offered our legislative expertise in helping them. Quite frankly. they more or less said they did not know how to go ahead with this soplisticated business of law writing and seemed to imply that they welcomed our help.