Speech #1050016419

Madam President. I wanted to call the attention of my colleagues and the people in the country to what I think is an important gathering here in the Nations Capital. It is a gathering which focuses on the elimination of assistance for legal immigrants. The sponsors of this gathering have done over the years a great deal of work with the Soviet Jewry. and I guess we can now say Russia and other republics. And. of course. they are concerned about legal immigrantsJews that have come from Russia or the other new republics. many of whom are elderly. many of whom have meager resources. and many of whom now as a result of action taken last Congress in the welfare bill v1ll be without supplementary security income assistance and will be without food nutrition assistance. What is important about this gathering. this rally. that is now taking place is that the sponsors have made it very clear that they dont want to focus just on Jews who have come to our country or who have fled persecution. but really on legal immigrants across the board from many different nations. The message of this rally. I think. is that we are a nation of proud immigrants. We are talking about many of our parents and many of our grandparents. In my case we are talking about my father who fled persecution from Russia. It really is shameful what we did. which I think was an overreach. which I hope we will rectify this Congress--I think we mustwhich is that we eliminated assistance to many people. As Mayor Giuliani said. by definition people who are receiving supplementary security income assistance or food nutrition assistance because they are so low income and poor really need this help. So what we are now faced with is a situation in our country where over 500.000 legal immigrants are going to be cut off supplementary security income and over 1 million are going to be cut off from any food stamp assistance. In the State of Minnesota about 35.000 legal immigrants are going to be cut off SSI and about 15.000 off food stamps. This rally is the first of many gatherings. I think we are going to see it all across the country. and it is going to be a combination of people who are scared to death.