The 1994 Human Rights World Watch Report does not even include an entry on the Ukraine. The 1993 Amnesty International report mentions only "one known prisoner of conscience. a conscientious objector to military service." The Amnesty International report said. "A civilian alternative t0 military service was open only to religious beliefs." In other words. the only prisoner of conscience in the Ukraine is in prison because of a lack of religious affiliation. I point all this out only to show how unnecessary this amendment is and the violence that it does to the integrity of the Refugee Act of 1980. where we would do these things on a casebycase basis. The Southeast Asian category groups established by the Lautenberg amendment were devised back in 198311 years ago. Has anyone inquired to check to see whether any conditions may have changed since then? Of course. they have. That is what the refugee designation is all about. changing conditions in a country. That is why the State Department is involved. along with the Justice Department. Is every Catholic in Vietnam a refugee? Is every Vietnamese of Chinese origin a refugee? Of course not. It is done on a casebycase basis. What this wellintended amendment does is it creates a bottleneck in refugee processing for the former Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of persons from the Lautenberg category groups have joined the queue for the 40.000 to 50.000 resettlement places per year from the former Soviet Union. This has caused a backup in processing. It makes it extremely difficult for these noncategory members. persons who do not get this special treatment provided by the Lautenberg amendment. to be considered for U.S. resettlement. An Armenian/Azerbaijani family of mixed ethnicity. for example. is at a great disadvantage here. without question. This amendment causes us to lock ourselves in to act on behalf of specified groupspowerful specified groupsresulting in multiyear commitments on their behalf. creating what is known as a "pipeline." This effectively restricts our refugee program 794)59 0--97 Vol. 140 (Pt. 1) 21 in its ability to respond flexibly to the fastchanging patterns of human rights violations in Eastern and Central Europe. Is there really a justification for designating some groups and not others as category groups? Should certain categories of Bosnians be included?
Identified stereotypes
Implies that the Lautenberg amendment creates a bottleneck in refugee processing for the former Soviet Union, making it difficult for non-category members to be considered.