Speech #1030125505

President. in 1989. I Joined with my colleague. Senator LAUTENBERG. in support of the retention of the standard of proof long required for certain categories of Soviet and Indochinese refugees who have faced continuing persecution. The socalled Lautenberg amendment. which passed the Senate unanimously in 1989. allowed Soviet Jews. Evangelical Christians. and certain categories of Southeast AsiansVietnamese. Laotians. and Cambodians--to qualify for refugee status by asserting a fear of persecution and presenting a "credible basis for concern about the possibility of such persecution." rather than a "wellfounded fear of persecution." The need for the enactment of the Lautenberg legislation emerged after the Immigration and Naturalization Service changed its longstanding screening practice of presuming these groups had a wellfounded fear of persecution. After the change in policy. the denial rate of these groups soared dramatically upward. Within a 3 month period in 1988. the denial rate for the Vietnamese Orderly Departure Program rose from under 10 percent to a denial rate of 80 percent.