Senator Says Soviet Jewry Groups Should Focus on Emigration Laws

Soviet Jewry groups should place more emphasis on lobbying for new Soviet laws that guarantee free emigration and less on resolving individual refusenik cases, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said last week.

“Today the challenge is to be able to move beyond the gratification of the individual cases towards the institutionalization within the Soviet Union of laws and procedures that will guarantee, on an across-the-board basis, the opportunity for free emigration,” he told the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews on Feb. 19, after receiving one of its biannual Henry Jackson Leadership Awards.

The Jackson Award is named for the late Democratic senator from Washington state, known affectionately as “Scoop,” who co-sponsored the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment barring U.S. trade benefits to the Soviets until they permit a sustained high level of Soviet Jewish emigration.

The Union of Councils praised Graham for helping to thwart attempts made last fall to grant the Soviets most-favored-nation trade status, which would have lowered U.S. duties on Soviet imported goods to the levels charged most other U.S. trading partners.

Instead, President Bush awarded the Soviets a lesser benefit, namely U.S. government food aid, in announcing Dec. 12 that he was issuing a Jackson-Vanik waiver through July.

A second Jackson Award went to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who told the Union of Councils, “We all have to be honest and say there have been more Jews allowed to leave the Soviet Union this past year than we had thought we were going to see, many of us, in our lifetime.”

“Organizations like this one are entitled to the credit in part,” he said, “for having put this so high on the international agenda.”