Mr. President. I bring to the attention of the Senate the case of Yan Satanovsky of Moscow. a Soviet Jew who has sought to emigrate since When Mr. Satanovsky and his family first applied for permission to emigrate to Israel. they were refused on the grounds of secrecy. They were refused repeatedly. most recently in June of 1990 when their appeal to the Weapons Ministry of the Soviet Government was turned down. But. Mr. President. the secret work for which Mr. Satanovsky was denied permission to emigrate was his Job at the Ministry of Machine Building. a job he left in 1974. It has now been 17 years since Mr. Satanovsky supposedly had access to secrets and 12 years since he first applied to emigrate. He has the dubious distinction of being possibly the oldest active refusenik case. There have been great changes in the former Soviet Union during the past few years. The movement of Soviet Jews is truly an exodus of Biblical proportions. New laws on immigration have been enacted. but not fully implemented. There are still practices which are inconsistent with the new law. And even though they have set a 5year limit on secrecy. there are two problems in the case of the Satanovsky family: the secrecy limitation law will not be implemented until January 1. 1993. and. the law has a clause that allows individual cases to be stretched out for prolonged periods.
Keywords matched
emigrate immigration