1,600 Soviet Emigrants Enter U.S. in a Single Day
NEW YORK (AP) _ The largest group of Jewish refugees to come to the United States in a single day in more than 40 years landed in time to celebrate the Jewish New Year here.
Kennedy International Airport was the scene of emotional reunions Thursday as the Soviet refugees - including 1,350 Jews and 250 Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians - arrived to take advantage of a processing policy that ends at midnight tonight.
The agencies that assist Jewish refugees decided to stop the flow early out of respect for Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown tonight and ends Sunday.
″Rosh Hashanah represents a new beginning for every Jew, but expecially for these people,″ said Karl Zukerman, executive director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who spent most of the day greeting the new arrivals.
″I dreamed of this day for a long time,″ said Zena Gadelova, as she embraced her four younger brothers, whom she hadn’t seen in five years. They arrived with 17 other relatives, including wives, children and in-laws.
New U.S. policies will mean longer waits for Soviet emigrants at a time when the Soviet Union is allowing record numbers to leave. Last year, 18,965 Jews emigrated, up from 8,155 in 1987. This year that number is expected to near 50,000.
Instead of being processed in Europe, as in the past, the refugees’ paperwork will be handled at the American Embassy in Moscow, the same as other would-be emigrants.
Many of the arriving refugees Thursday had been among 14,000 Soviet Jews waiting in Rome for final processing. It was the largest number of Jewish immigrants to arrive in the United States on a single day since the end of World War II.
Mikhail Sukhar of Moscow said he had given up hope of getting out of Rome before the deadline after his first application to enter the United States was denied. ″I didn’t even reapply, but they said I could go.″
U.S. officials have said they will continue to review the applications of Soviet refugees already waiting in Rome and Vienna.
Since the early 1970s, both Jews and Christians who wanted to leave Moscow applied for Israeli visas at the Dutch Embassy, which performed consular functions for Israel in Moscow.
They would then proceed to Vienna or Rome, where as many as 90 percent of the Soviet Jews expressed a desire to go to the United States. Their applications almost automatically were approved by U.S. immigration officials.
The Israeli government has asked the United States to change the policy in the hope of attracting more Soviet Jews to settle in Israel, but State Department officials deny the policy change was at Israel’s behest.
