Madam Chairman. the Congress over the years has erected a noble and generous immigration policy that reflects the American spirit. For many years we have accepted more immigrants than all of the rest of Western industrialized countries in the world put together. What a noble statement that is of American ideals. We have pressured the Soviet Union for years to live up to its obligation under the Helsinki accords and permit their people to emigrate and to loosen and relax the pressures of religious discimination that have so devastated the lives of not only Jews and Pentecostals. but others. too. Now we are about to seize defeat out of the jaws of victory. Now just as our relentless pressuring over the years is beginning to pay off and the Soviet Union is beginning to relax those iron chains and open up their doors. significantly. to their credit. we are saying to those who have suffered for seeking freedom that we cannot absorb them. We cannot absorb refugees from the Soviet Union who have been among our greatest scientists. our business leaders. communications people. artists. pianists. violinists. contributing to the progress of American engineering. science. mathematics. and culture. We have a rate of adult illiteracy in this country of 25 percent. Most Soviet immigrants who come into this country are literate. productive. and contribute to our economy. To abandon our longstanding policy now. when it is finally working would be a supreme irony. It is preposterous. It is an insult to the Congress that the Justice Department has demeaned and degraded the nobility of our immigration policy and the efforts of countless people over many years past to bring freedom to oppressed minorities who wish to come to our shores. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Connecticut and the gentleman from New York for this marvelous amendment and I urge my colleagues to support it.
Identified stereotypes
Soviet immigrants are literate, productive, and contribute to the economy.