Judy Silver Shapiro told newsmen today that her husband. Gavriel, would have to pay a $12,000 "ransom" for a visa to leave the Soviet Union. The Cincinnati social worker who married the Jewish activist at a religious ceremony at his Moscow home last June, spoke to reporters outside the Soviet Embassy where she had just been turned down again in her request for a visa to go to Russia.
Mrs. Shapiro said the $12,000 visa fee stemmed from the new Soviet decree that Jews wishing to emigrate reimburse the State for the free higher education they received. Shapiro is an engineer. Mrs. Shapiro said that each of her in-laws would have to pay the equivalent of $20,000 in order to leave Russia. Doth hold doctorate degrees.
She told newsmen that today was the appointed day for her civil marriage to Shapiro, promised by the Moscow marriage bureau. Religious marriages are not recognized in the Soviet Union. She said that if she had a civil marriage in the Soviet Union her husband would have a legal approach for emigration to the US. Shapiro was sentenced last month to a year’s "corrective labor" for alleged draft evasion. He is permitted to live at home but must work at a job assigned by the authorities and must remit a portion of his salary to the State.
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