Chairman KENNEDY. This does not come through the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare?

Mr. JEFFERSON. This was a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare contract, I am quite sure; yes.

Chairman KENNEDY. Could you give us the name of the university? Mr. JEFFERSON. Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, N.J. Too large a number of the teachers who have been trained are now back in the communities from which they were recruited. They have the frustration of going through the training but not getting the opportunity that they were trained to have.

Chairman KENNEDY. Are there any requests pending from either universities or corporations for trained personnel?

Mr. JEFFERSON. Oh, yes. The opportunities are many for refugees, for our shortages are great. We could place many more doctors and medical specialists, for example.

Chairman KENNEDY. And is this because of the restrictions?

Mr. JEFFERSON. Yes. Scientists, first, and teachers next. We have not touched the secondary school field, for example. We are working largely with higher education, but we want to go into the secondary field, public and private. This is a foundation-supported project, as my statement indicates.

Mr. ABRAMS. Have you had any relations with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare concerning the possibility of arranging a contract to sustain your organization and to provide you an adequate opportunity to pick up the professional people?

Mr. JEFFERSON. We have not as yet.

Mr. HENNESSY. May I interrupt? We were fortunate enough to secure the service of Mr. Jefferson. We have reported to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for consideration of enlarge ment of our services with interest in involvement in the Miami area, a branch office, if you will.

Mr. ABRAMS. When was that recommendation made?

Mr. HENNESSY. That was as early as 2 years ago.

Mr. ABRAMS. What happened as a result of that?

Mr. HENNESSY Our attempt did not meet with success.

Mr. ABRAMS. As things stand now, do you feel that the professional people have been given sufficient help?

Mr. JEFFERSON. No. They are getting help from other agencies in other areas without question. We have no adequate measure of stating whether or not they are getting all of the help they need, except that there is more than adequate evidence of underemployment. There are more Cubans working in factories in New York at $75 a week who are doctors, lawyers, teachers, et cetera. The U.S. Employment Service can detail the statistics. We are, incidentally, working very closely with them and enjoy their fullest cooperation.

Mr. ABRAMS. Do you feel that a longer range program would help this type of thing?

Mr. JEFFERSON. I am certain it would.

Mr. ABRAMS. Making them available?

Mr. JEFFERSON. We are talking about matching plans-we are talking about a selection, identification, counseling and matching plan. We have been experimenting with matching plans in England

and in the United States and other places. Taiwan, incidentally, has a fine matching plan for students and places in colleges. We need something of this sort in the employment field, especially the professional employment field, for refugees and for Americans, too. You should see the crude way employers recruit at Harvard or MIT-the waste of Government and private dollars and I am very much concerned about that. I think perhaps the work with the refugees can be a pilot project-it can show the way to the private sector of the economy. So that, if you will, Du Pont, General Motors, et cetera, can recruit more efficiently and more effectively and match places and talents in ways that they are not now doing. We will all gain. We really are not doing what we must through the selection process for people and positions anywhere.

Doctors might serve in the pharmaceutical houses, for instance, in sales and research and other positions. They might be working in other places, too. I am not sure that my example of doctors is limited. I know that the doctor has often been misplaced or underemployed. This mostly happens when he is the older person, once he is in his sixties. This is another role that our agency fills. We are becoming a specialized agency for the older workers. This has become an important experience for us, and we are probably as experienced as anyone in the United States in this field right now.

Mr. ABRAMS. Would you give us the type of jobs, for instance, which lawyers fill with their background and skill?

Mr. JEFFERSON. They are working in insurance firms as claim adjusters, where they have had a quick impact in resolving the backlog of claims in such areas as Spanish Harlem.

Mr. ABRAMS. Is that compatible with their background?

Mr. JEFFERSON. Some are doing things that are not compatible. We have a refugee lawyer on our staff, for example. He happens to be a Hungarian. He has a special gift in this field. He devised our librarian-lawyer retraining program and is retraining them for very specialized library services.

Mr. ABRAMS. Have you had meetings with the fellow agencies to try to work out something, to develop something that would utilize the training of professionals?

Mr. JEFFERSON. I think the four agencies have worked with us quite satisfactorily. I think we are well known throughout the agency world. I have nothing but thanks to our sister agencies for the help they have given us. In the case of Hias they actually make a donation to us each year.

Mr. ABRAMS. My question is much simpler. If there are lawyers and other highly skilled people working at jobs that have no relation to their background or their skill, do you try to place them?

Mr. JEFFERSON. We have not always identified them. We have not always produced the job that we want to produce for them. We have not always had the time and the staff in any of our agencies to counsel and to bring that lawyer and the specialized opportunity in the law firm together.

Mr. ABRAMS. You are saying that you do not have the time for proper counseling and enough information on these refugees. Is that the reason for failure, or is there a failure somewhere else?

Mr. JEFFERSON. I think that in part it is an agency failure. None of us are perfect. We are all understaffed, overworked, and undersupported every public and private agency I know of.

Chairman KENNEDY. Would it be helpful to develop a relationship with HEW, to have a representative of your group at the reception center in Miami-would it help to do that?

Mr. JEFFERSON. It would be most helpful if we were represented

there.

Chairman KENNEDY. Would you be willing to assume that kind of responsibility, if that matter could be worked out?

Mr. JEFFERSON. I know that I can speak for ACEP and say “Yes.” Chairman KENNEDY. You do not see any reason why any of these other agencies would not cooperate and work with you, that they would not be receptive to this?

Mr. JEFFERSON. I see none at all, Senator Kennedy; and indeed we would be very happy to occupy a surplus of desk space in the Hias office or in any of the other agencies.

Chairman KENNEDY. How long has your organization been in operation?

Mr. JEFFERSON. Twenty-one years. We are the youngest agency represented, I am sure.

Chairman KENNEDY. Do you have a contract or arrangement with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on any of these refugee programs?

Mr. JEFFERSON. No, sir.

Chairman KENNEDY. You have never had any contract relationship with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare?

Mr. JEFFERSON. No, sir. Our support from the Government has been from a National Science Foundation contract with the National Academy of Sciences wherein the latter transferred the program to ACEP.

Chairman KENNEDY. I thank you very much. I think you are providing an excellent and needed service. I think it is extremely interesting. I think it is very worthwhile. We appreciate your presence here this morning, and we thank you for taking time to come down here and give us this information.

Mr. JEFFERSON. Thank you very much for permitting us to appear. Chairman KENNEDY. We will adjourn subject to the call of the Chair.

(Whereupon, at 12 o'clock meridian, the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.)

CUBAN REFUGEE PROBLEM

TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 1966

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REFUGEES AND ESCAPEES OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in room 457, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Kennedy and Fong.

Also present: George Abrams, general counsel; Dale S. de Haan, research consultant; Dr. Donald M. Chang, minority counsel; and Mrs. Theresa Greenly, secretary to the subcommittee.

Chairman KENNEDY. The subcommitee will come to order.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. William vanden Heuvel, president of the International Rescue Committee. He has appeared here before. He has testified in the past about the work of the International Rescue Committee, which has done outstanding service in the field of refugees in the Far East, particularly in Hong Kong and South Vietnam. I know that he has had a vast experience with the problem of refugees throughout the world, and has had numerous contacts with leading figures in that field.

We will go off the record for just a moment.

(Discussion was had outside the record.)

Chairman KENNEDY. We will be glad to hear from you now, Mr. vanden Heuvel.

You have copies of your testimony for members of the press and of the committee?

If so, we would like to have them made available.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM VANDEN HEUVEL, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Mr. VANDEN HEUVEL. Mr. Chairman, I have made a copy available to the reporter, and I will make this copy before me available to the committee, but I intend, if you do not mind, to speak extemporaneously instead of just reading from the prepared statement, so that if there are any facts that you may wish to elicit by any questions that you might have, I will take the opportunity to answer them.

Chairman KENNEDY. We may feel free to interrupt you at anytime then?

Mr. VANDEN HEUVEL. Please do, Senator.

May I begin, Senator, by expressing on behalf of the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee our deep and genuine

appreciation to the subcommittee and to you as chairman for the extraodinary activity it has conducted under your stewardship.

I am here today to speak primarily about the Cuban refugees in the United States, but, as with every refugee crisis, there are peripheral considerations, and I think that there are considerations today relating to Vietnam that will be of special interest to you.

The International Rescue Committee began its program relating to the Cuban refugees as the first of the voluntary agencies to do so in July of 1960. At that time, some 40,000 to 50,000 Cuban refugees had already left their country. For the most part, they were the wealthy and the well-to-do, but already in July of that year it was becoming clear that the exodus that was taking place in Cuba was going to be a gigantic one.

In November of 1960, the International Rescue Committee opened its first office in Miami, followed several weeks later by the first governmental office under the direction of Tracy S. Voorhees, a man whose leadership has been of great value in many refugee emergencies and has meant a great deal to the voluntary agencies.

Since 1960, the International Rescue Committee, in its work with the Cubans, has established offices not only in Miami but also in California and other States and cities throughout the United States, in addition to its headquarters in New York. The IRC has worked through offices in Spain, in Mexico, in Jamaica, and it has given assistance to Cuban exiles in places as far apart as Tokyo, Stockholm, Halifax, and Lima.

We estimate that the total number of Cuban refugees in the United States is something over 300,000, as of today. Taking that figure, the International Rescue Committee has given one kind of service or another, financial, medical, placement, counseling, clothing to some 60,000 Cuban refugees. And since December 1, 1965, when the airlift from Havana began to fly Cuban refugees to Miami at the rate of 800 a week, our registration rolls have been rising by about 800 people a month. As of now, our caseloads reflect over 41,000 refugees who have voluntarily chosen the International Rescue Committee as their agency of resettlement.

In 1961, we were successful in resettling about 2 out of every 10 Cubans out of the Miami area. By the end of 1964, that figure had risen to 47 percent; and as of today, it is over 52 percent.

I hope that this subcommittee and you, Senator, will find it possible to hold hearings on Cuban refugees outside of Miami. For example, I think it is important to come to New York to ask the question: What kind of burden has the Cuban represented for example to the welfare rolls of Metropolitan New York?

In Miami, we estimate of our own caseloads about 7.5 percent of the Cubans still need public assistance, but these reflect the hardship cases, the aged, the infirm, the handicapped, the very young, the ones who cannot really be resettled out of Miami. The vast, predominant majority of Cubans who have resettled outside of Miami have not been a burden to the cities or to the communties which have given them asylum. Instead, they have been a very productive force in every single one of those communities. In New York, New Jersey, Cali