Soviet Emigration Policy Meant to Satisfy U.s., Discourage Most Jews, State Department Official Says

The Soviet Union’s emigration policy is aimed at allowing enough Jews to leave to satisfy its foreign policy objectives toward the United States while discouraging most Soviet Jews from applying for emigration visas, according to a senior State Department official.

This policy would allow perhaps 10,000 Jews a year to emigrate, an increase from the previous low of about 1,000, while enabling the Soviet leaders “to say that they cannot be faulted because most applicants do in fact receive approvals of their applications,” Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, said Monday.

He gave this analysis in a speech to the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit. The text was made available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here.

“The position of the government of the United States is, therefore, clear,” Schifter said. “While we welcome the steps taken in recent months to increase Jewish emigration, we do not consider them even close to adequate.”

In explaining the Soviet policy, Schifter rejected the view that the Soviet Union decreased emigration after the record high of more than 50,000 in 1979 because of the U.S. Senate’s failure to ratify the SALT II treaty or the general deterioration of relations between the U.S. and the USSR.

SOVIETS HAD ENOUGH, HE SAID

Instead, he said the Soviets “came to the conclusion that Jewish emigration applications were coming in at much too high a figure and had to be cut back.” He said the Soviets realized that the more Jews they allowed to emigrate, the more applied for visas.

Schifter said that since the beginning of the year, when a new more restrictive emigration law went into effect, the Soviets have been allowing the emigration mostly of persons on the list of the some 12,000 to 15,000 persons who had previously been refused emigration visas up to Dec. 31, 1986.

The Soviets have made clear that “these applicants are being processed under special rules, without reference to the new emigration decree,” Schifter said. He said this practice appears “designed to allow the Soviet Union to complete the reexamination of the pre-1987 applications in a manner which discourages any new large wave of applications.”

He urged all concerned to “recognize the policy of discouraging applications, and to call for a change in that policy.” He stressed that Secretary of State George Shultz “has frequently pointed out that Soviet performance in the field of human rights, including emigration, affects all aspects of the relationship between the United States and the USSR.”