B’nai B’rith reported today it has asked that Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger “vigorously protest” the Soviet Union’s “exorbitant exit tax” against educated Soviet citizens seeking to emigrate. In a wire to President Nixon last week, David M. Blumberg, president of B’nai B’rith, proposed that Dr. Kissinger’s current consultations in Moscow be used to convey the United States’ distress over the tactic of taxing a would-be emigre as much as $30,000 depending on the extent of his “free education” in the Soviet Union. The measure–which Blumberg condemned as “sheer ransom”–is scheduled for a ratification vote by the Supreme Soviet on Sept, 19.
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