Freedom’s Door Shut in Face of Soviet Jews

Fifteen years ago, the United States told the Soviet Union that if Moscow hoped to enjoy friendlier relations--or significant trade--with Washington, it would have to allow many more Soviet Jews to emigrate to the country of their choice. During the past year, Mikhail S. Gorbachev has essentially met or exceeded this longstanding U.S. demand. Yet Washington began to restrict severely the number of Soviet Jews it would admit--and hardly anyone complained.

The resulting situation is a paradox fraught with political irony and human tragedy. It demonstrates Washington’s inability to replace rhetoric with action when an unexpected and unaccustomed foreign-policy success comes along. It tests the mettle of the leaders of the mainstream American Jewish community, which may not be as prepared to pick a fight with Washington or Jerusalem as it was with Moscow. And it creates another source of tension between the United States and Israel.

The primary losers, meanwhile, are the people whom American politicians claimed they were trying to help--Soviet Jews. Some are stranded “in transit” in the potentially hostile environment of Austria. Since they have Israeli visas and cannot get American ones, others may find themselves in West Bank settlements, where they will be unwitting targets of the Palestinian intifada. Still more, after weeks or months of standing in line, have no hope of even an interview with a consular officer at the U.S. embassy in Moscow for at least another year. While the State Department has proposed a large increase in the consular staff, the added personnel probably couldn’t make a significant dent in the present backlog of 30,000 applications.

The origin of this sad predicament lies in an amendment to the 1974 U.S. trade bill. Sponsored by the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) and Charles A. Vanik, then a Democratic congressman from Ohio, the amendment offered the Soviet Union “most favored nation” trade status if Moscow relaxed its emigration policy. By doing so, Congress injected a new element of idealism into U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union.

“Jackson-Vanik,” before and after passage, enhanced the political reputations and campaign treasuries of Republicans and Democrats who attacked the Soviet leadership’s callousness toward a long-suffering Jewish minority. Within the American Jewish community, it spawned the new battle cry of “Free Soviet Jews” and became the basis for fresh political action. Indeed, the “refusenik”--a Soviet Jew denied permission to emigrate to Israel or other countries--emerged as a new international symbol of repression.

In practice, the Jackson-Vanik amendment worked well for a time. Leonid I. Brezhnev, the late Soviet leader, was willing to swallow his irritation and make concessions to gain trade advantages. In an extraordinary series of negotiations concluded in October, 1974, the Ford Administration and the Soviets, under pressure from Jackson and congressional allies, agreed that “no unreasonable or unlawful impediments” would be placed in the way of persons wanting to emigrate. Equally important, those who applied would not be punished for trying to leave the Soviet Union.

As a result, Soviet Jewish emigration steadily rose. In 1979, 51,000 Jews--an all-time high--were permitted to leave. More than half came to the United States.

But during Brezhnev’s last years and under the caretaker regimes that preceded Gorbachev, the exodus diminished sharply. The record was especially bleak during Ronald Reagan’s first term as President.

Under Gorbachev, all this has changed. In 1986, his first full year in power, only 1,900 people, 900 of them Jews, were allowed to emigrate; 641 came to America. A year later, more than 8,000 Jews were permitted to leave, with nearly 6,000 coming here. And in 1988, almost 19,000 left, 13,000 of whom ended up in the United States.

This year, Soviet Jewish emigration is expected to reach 48,000. The number for August alone--6,756--was the highest monthly total in more than 20 years.

Now the problem is at the American end of the pipeline.

There is general agreement that Soviet emigration reform has matched U.S. expectations and probably won’t backslide. Accordingly, a one-year trial waiver of the Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions has broad support.

But in September, 1988, the State Department dropped its longstanding presumption that Soviet Jewish emigres qualify as refugees. Those seeking admission to the United States, it decreed, would be considered on a case-by-case basis, following individual interviews. One result, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is that the latest Soviet applicants have had more trouble demonstrating a “well-founded fear of persecution,” a prerequisite for being granted refugee status, because of favorable changes in the Soviet Union.

Bush Administration policy has seemed contradictory. On one hand, it proposed creation of a new category of “special immigrants” whose admission “is deemed for foreign-policy reasons to be in the national interest.” For the next five years, 30,000 special visas would be offered annually, many presumably going to Soviet emigres. On the other hand, the Administration quietly developed an interagency plan to cut back on the number of Soviet Jews admitted as refugees; those without relatives, for example, will be automatically excluded. (About half the Soviet Jewish applicants are expected to fall in that category.)

Although officials have not been eager to discuss the plan, various explanations can be found in certain State Department documents: that Soviet Jewish refugees, who cost about $7,000 each to transport and resettle here, have become too expensive; that Soviet spies may be among a new tide of emigres, and that it would be better for more of the Soviet Jews to go to Israel, perhaps on direct charter flights from Moscow.

In fact, the Bush Administration coordinator for refugee affairs, Jewel S. Lafontant, told Congress in September that 5,000 Soviet Jews now stranded in Austria and Italy could “always go to Israel or return to Russia. In these days of glasnost , that’s not an impossible thing.” A day later, Lafontant said that her remark had been “misunderstood.” Undersecretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said it in no way suggested that Soviet Jews should go home. Yet, the incident highlighted the disarray in Administration policy on Soviet Jews.)

A State Department report acknowledges that even if official anti-Semitism has abated in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, the country’s 2 million Jews still face severe discrimination. Extreme prejudice has also surfaced among members of grass-roots nationalist organizations that have revived during glasnost . And once potential emigres have announced their desire to leave the Soviet Union, their lives there have been permanently disrupted.

All this has failed to stir much public outrage in this country. The House of Representatives, to its credit, overwhelmingly passed a bill in July giving Soviet Jews and evangelical Christians nearly automatic refugee status for a year, but the Bush Administration opposes it. American Jewish organizations have not repainted the “Free Soviet Jews” signs in front of synagogues to read “Admit Soviet Jews.”

There may always have been a degree of cynicism and political opportunism in the official American policy toward Soviet Jewish emigration. Some will accuse Soviet Jews of trying to jump ahead of other persecuted people who want to come here. But does the United States not have an obligation to those people whose freedom it has demanded for 15 years?

Perhaps the Soviets who took U.S. rhetoric seriously should have been warned long ago that this nation of immigrants has a lot of practice shutting its door on those it has encouraged to flee oppression elsewhere.