For decades they have been given our assurances of freedom during our visits with them in the Soviet Union and in repeated broadcasts of Voice of America. They have been the pivotal point of our diplomatic polemics and our foreign policy. Summit after summit. we have been arguing. negotiating. and conditioning our agreements with the Soviet Union on the basis of this groups right to emigrate. And our trade policy has put our dollars where our mouth is. Now. they are a group of people that the American administration is spurnIng. making them the American version of refuseniks or "waitniks." What has changed? This vaunted word "glasnost" has not eradicated antisemitism and political persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. Antisemitism is flourishing in the Soviet Union under glasnost and the need of these refugees to emigrate has become even more pronounced. Remember: None of the reforms that have been publicized to the worlds media have been legalized or institutionalized. If President Gorbachev failsthese reforms can fail with him.
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emigrate refugees