Some 16,000 Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel in April, the highest monthly total this year but still far fewer than the 20,000 who had been expected.
The Jewish Agency for Israel, which assists with immigration, put the monthly total at 15,585, while the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in New York announced a figure of 16,286.
According to Jewish Agency spokesman Gad Ben-Ari, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews are putting off plans to immigrate here for the time being because of the housing and employment problems in Israel.
But he said the Jewish Agency expects a modest increase this month in Soviet aliyah, which totals about 50,000 for the year to date.
According to the agency, a total of 17,272 immigrants arrived in Israel last month, including 997 Jews from Ethiopia. That was an improvement over March, when aliyah was halted for two weeks, bringing the total for the month to 696 arrivals.
About 100,000 Jews in the Soviet Union now hold visas for Israel that they are not using for the time being, the Jewish Agency spokesman said. Ben-Ari said the lines outside the Israeli Consulate in Moscow now are mainly composed of those seeking to extend the validity of their visas, which are valid for only three months.
An official of the Jewish Agency’s aliyah information center said that recent telephone and mail queries from Soviet Jews about conditions in Israel show that they have a realistic understanding about the problems of finding affordable housing and decent jobs here.
The worsening absorption situation occupied the members of the Jewish Agency Executive, which met Tuesday in Jerusalem. The Executive, which includes Diaspora fund-raising and community leaders, adopted a proposal by Chairman Simcha Dinitz for an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Shamir.
The heads of the agency asked Shamir to take charge of absorption policy personally and to head the ministerial absorption committee, which Housing Minister Ariel Sharon now chairs. Shamir replied that he was already sufficiently involved.
5,000 APPLIED FOR GERMAN VISAS
Paul Berger of Washington, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, told the Executive that there is a growing feeling in the United States that the Israeli government cannot cope with the mass wave of aliyah and is not properly utilizing the resources set aside for this purpose.
Dinitz told the Executive that 85 percent of the immigrants leaving the Soviet Union now arrive at the transit points in Eastern Europe by rail. Only a small percentage arrive now by air, because they can bring much more baggage with them by rail.
He said some 5,000 Soviet Jews have applied for immigration visas to Germany, but most of them apparently will not be accepted. Several thousand Soviet Jews arrived last year in Germany as tourists and then requested immigrant visas.
The Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum last week condemned the plan recently put forward by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, calling for a large one-time increase in the quota of Soviet refugees allowed into the United States. The forum is headed by Natan Sharansky, the famous former prisoner of conscience.
Referring to the plan as “dangerous,” the forum said in a statement that it would give many Soviet Jews the “illusory hope” of coming soon to the United States, prompting them to postpone or cancel their plans to go to Israel.
IMMIGRATION TO U.S. DOWN
A total of 2,171 Soviet Jews immigrated to the United States as refugees last month, according to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York. That was a drop from March, when 2,470 Soviet Jews immigrated there.
The April figure brings Soviet immigration to the United States to 11,101 for the first seven months of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
Up to 40,000 Soviet Jews will be permitted to immigrate to the United States during the fiscal year, but at this rate, the quota is unlikely to be filled, despite the fact that thousands of Soviet Jews are waiting to leave.
Officials of HIAS and the National Conference blame delays in the issuing of visas by the Soviet state emigration agency OVIR.
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