Madam Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Madam Chairman. surely we all want to insure that our Nation offers generous resettlement to emigrants from the Soviet Union. There is a special concern for Soviet Jews and Pentecostals. and that is certainly a valid one. However. H.R. 2022 addresses these concerns in an impractical and costly manner. By presuming refugee status for Soviet Jews and Evangelical Christians. this bill is a dangerous precedent in violation of the Refugee Act of 1980. Mandating the creation of categories is unnecessary and unwise. As the gentleman from Texas said. how do we go back to our constituents and to those people or those refugees with families from the Philippines. from Vietnam. from South America and Central America. and from other areas and tell them that they are going to be treated differently than someone else? The Refugee Act of 1980 already permits the Attorney General of the United States to designate categories of applicants identified as targets of persecution in a particular country. Such a designation should come out of the policymaking process in regard to the Soviet Union. Madam Chairman. I also rise in opposition to H.R. 2022 because of the unlimited potential for its cost. We already spend millions of dollars every year to help refugees with their resettlement. and this bill would tack on additional costs. And we must consider that possibly hundreds of thousands of applicants who are waiting to come into the United States may have to wait now for indefinitely long periods of time because of the very uncertain and unclear policies of the United States toward refugees. These staggering figures point to even more staggering costs on this bill that was passed by this House today. Madam Chairman.
Keywords matched
Refugee refugee emigrants refugees