Senate Amendment Would Ease Jews’ Bid for Asylum in America

The Senate this week voted to extend legislation that makes it easier for Jews from the former Soviet Union to seek asylum here.

The two-year extension, sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), was passed Tuesday as an amendment to the State Department authorization bill.

It allows refugees considered members of historically persecuted groups, including Soviet Jews and some Indochinese asylum-seekers, to meet a lower standard of proof for refugee status when trying to enter the United States.

A number of Jewish groups had backed the amendment and were pleased at its passage by a vote of 85-15.

“Given the continuing uncertainty in the former Soviet Union, it is very important to see a continuation” of the amendment, Mark Levin, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, said Wednesday.

Both Levin and Martin Wenick, executive director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, praised Lautenberg for his active support of the amendment.

Lautenberg and Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter last week in the Senate arguing for passage of the amendment.

The Senate version of the legislation now heads for a conference committee with the House version, which does not include the extension of the Lautenberg amendment.

Pamela Cohen, national president of the Union of Councils, a group dealing with the concerns of Jews in the former Soviet Union, said in a statement this week that her group “urges and expects” that the House will accept the Lautenberg amendment.

The amendment is not connected to other government activities involving actual numbers of refugees allowed into the United States from various parts of the world.

The provisions of the Lautenberg amendment first went into effect in 1990.