Prior to the refugees' departure, Castro and his cohorts have confiscated their homes and stripped them of all their worldly possessions, leaving with them little more than the clothes on their backs. In view of this tragic situation, consideration should be given to extending to all these Cuban refugees some initial and limited financial grant, as is now provided to Cubans who resettle outside of Miami. At present, the refugee who chooses not to resettle outside of Miami must turn to some religious or social agency for initial help since public assistance is not available. Confronted with this situation, the Catholic diocese of Miami has opened all its social welfare, religious agencies, and educational institutions to assist the refugee. These facilities, supported wholly by the parishioners of the diocese, have been made available in an endeavor to alleviate as much as possible the additional hardships imposed on these people who already have given up so much in their pursuit of freedom.

We are also very much concerned about the plight of Cuban refugees who have secured temporary asylum in countries outside of Cuba and who are now finding it most difficult to obtain the necessary visa to join their relatives in the United States. These refugees face the new procedures in our immigration laws since, as natives of the Western Hemisphere, they are now required to obtain Department of Labor employment certifications prior to visa issuance. We have faced much difficulty in endeavoring to obtain the necessary certifications, which entail extensive documentation both on the part of the refugee and the employer, a procedure which is almost impossible to implement in this emergent situation. These refugees, unlike their brother political refugees from the Eastern Hempishere, are not exempt from the certification requirement. Furthermore, they are not able to qualify for the exemption granted for the purpose of family reunion since their parents, spouses, and children in most cases have not been granted lawful permanent residence, even though they have been in the United States for many years and form an integral part of our Nation's

economy.

The most distressing example of hardship is the plight of unaccompanied children in institutions and foster homes throughout the country whose parents are in exile abroad. These children, many of whom had been sent by their parents to the United States to escape the indoctrination of communism, have for many years been deprived of the tender loving care and guidance which only a parent can give. This continued indefinite separation intensifies the potential problems of social adjustment once the family is reunited and does nothing to alleviate the heartache of a lonely child crying in the dark hours of the night for its mother.

The indefinite and limbolike status of the majority of Cubans in the United States certainly needs correction. The majority of these people were admitted under a temporary status known as indefinite parole. They should now be made permanent residents of our Nation. These persons are contributing their skills, paying taxes, adding to our economic welfare, but yet they do not enjoy the rights and prerogatives of their neighbor. Since these refugees are not permanent residents, many professions are closed to them despite the fact that they possess outstanding training and experience and there is a definite need for

their services. Although they may have resided in a State for years, they still are required to pay additional college tuition and local taxes, since they do not meet the residence requirements, a prerequisite of which is lawful permanent residence. The desire of their youth to volunteer in a specialized branch of the armed services for which they have the training is not open to them because they lack the needed "green card." The citizenship of our great Nation, which we take many times so for granted, is the goal, strongly coveted by many of these newcomers to our shores. However, this is barred to them since we have accepted them only as temporary guests rather than permanent members of our national family.

However, above all, it must be remembered that our President, our legislative leaders, and our citizenry, deserve the resounding praise of the world for instituting not only an excellent program to help the oppressed, but for undertaking one of the largest overall family reunification programs recorded in history. The true mark of the Cuban refugee program is well exemplified in the words of President Johnson before the Statue of Liberty:

The lesson of our times is sharp and clear in this movement of people from one land to another. Once again, it stamps the mark of failure on a regime when many of its citizens voluntarily choose to leave the land of their birth for a more hopeful home. The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people.

That is the end of our formal presentation. We will endeavor to provide answers to any questions that you may have.

Chairman KENNEDY. Thank you for your fine statement. spoke on the adjustment of status for the refugee.

Mr. MCCARTHY. We are very much in favor of that.

You

Chairman KENNEDY. Do you feel that this is for humanitarian reasons?

Mr. MCCARTHY. It is very humanitarian in the case of doctors, who cannot take care of others. They are not permanent. They do not have the proper papers which are prerequisite for this. In Miami you have these boys who want to volunteer for the armed services for the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Army-they talk to the recruiting sergeant who says, "I cannot do a thing for you; go to the draft board."

And the only way that it can be handled is to be drafted. They cannot volunteer. These young people are deprived of something, despite the fact that they have been here for years.

The granting of permanent residence, first, would be a tremendous help for the children who are here, the unaccompanied children. If they got permanent residence, their parents, who are in Spain or Mexico and in other countries, would be able to come to the United States without the labor clearance. This is now almost impossible to obtain. There is no doubt about their skill and training.

We strongly endorse any action that could be taken for some means to adjudicate the status of these people. And we would further recommend that this adjustment status be handled the same for Hungarians or anybody else. That their status be adjusted nunc pro tunc the date of arrival; in other words, that their status not be adjusted as of the time they applied. These people have been here 5 and 6 years now.

We think that this residence should be credited toward their potential citizenship.

Chairman KENNEDY. Will you describe in some detail how one could determine the status of these people, how one could check those who have professional skills, so far as job opportunities in the United States are concerned? You referred to that. Please give us some examples. I would like to have you do that, because it would be helpful.

Mr. MCCARTHY. The outstanding example is in the medical profession, where those who have these skills are badly needed. We come into those trained people in the aircraft industry, and in other industries. In these industries contracts require security clearance, and they cannot obtain that until they get permanent residence.

Do you know of any specific cases Mr. McLoone?

Chairman KENNEDY. The number of skilled people who are coming in is not too extensive, is it?

Mr. MCCARTHY. At the present moment-what we are concerned with at the present time-the large influx, of course, of the wives and the children, the men who had to flee, but we are talking about the people who are already here, under the reunification program.

Chairman KENNEDY. How do you characterize the skills of the refugees who are already here; would those be different from the people who are coming in now?

Mr. MCCARTHY. In the first rush we did get the cream of the crop. There is a slight breakdown, but we are still getting the trained people, the trained professions coming into the United States. We have no example of this.

We have no problem whatever in getting jobs for these people. They are already employed. Many times they are underemployed. We will get a bank executive who goes to work handling checks or filing checks. However, soon these people rise to their level.

We are getting people in from the legal professions who have the training and are now going into other work. They cannot become lawyers, unfortunately, but they do go into professional lines, they do become teachers and professors.

Do we have the figure on that, Mr. McLoone?

Mr. McLOONE. There are 12,000 that arrived in the airlift and about 10 percent are in the professional, semiprofessional categories. Mr. McCARTHY. How many are nonprofessional?

Mr. McLOONE. The students and children and housewives, 7,600, in that category. Clerical and sales is about 10 or 12 percent of the arrivals. The skilled in different crafts would be 600, maybe 700. Mr. MCCARTHY. How many unskilled-what is the percentage of unskilled?

Mr. McCLOONE. 718.

Mr. MCCARTHY. In a percentage breakdown, a large majority have some skills or training-maybe it may only be in sales or in mercantile or professional fields, but in relation to the unskilled or the untrained the percentage is much in favor of the better class of people coming in, even at the present time.

Chairman KENNEDY. You have a Government contract, do you not? Mr. McCARTHY. That is right. We have a contract with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare wherein we resettle these people throughout the Nation.

In our program of resettling outside of Miami we get a grant of $100 per person for resettling that person throughout the Nation. This enables us to obtain jobs, housing, to get them started in their new community. Of course, in some areas, they are low in number, and in other areas it is very high in number.

However, this problem is all based largely on the housing situation. In New Orleans, where people go, Hurricane Betsy wiped out the housing, so that the public housing no longer is available to us. We put these people into a house, into an apartment. Of course, it costs $150 a month. The same situation exists in Newark. In New York there is adequate housing. We do not have a problem.

You must remember that these people are free, the same as you and I, to go where they want. We do not tell the person that he has to go any place.

That is a big problem that we have in this program. We do not know who is going to arrive until they arrive in Miami. And in, practically, 48 hours we endeavor to get these people out and have them reunited with their brother, their sister, their mother, their father.

The people at the other end do not have the time to set up adequate housing, so that in the interim period we have to do the leg work, we have to set up the housing, we have to provide for a job. And we have found from experience that the most important thing is to get the house. Jobs in our Nation are plentiful. They are not displacing anyone they are not taking the place of anybody now employed. They are moving into vacant slots.

We had a call here from the Hot Shoppes of Washington some time ago stating that they would take 200 people. A firm in town here, Rent-A-Man, an employment agency, stated that they would take as many as we could send them. Jobs are no problem.

The primary thing is to get a house and then to find a job near the house for these people.

We provide under this contract the immediate necessary medical help, the initial doctor visits, if they need them, eye glasses, food. It is an amazing program.

The $100 does not cover this expense. These local communities have social workers. Everyone of our operations is professionally equipped. And when these people go into an area there are trained social workers to help them. And this is under the direction of resettlement directors.

These people obtain medical and social assistance, medical help, housing, it is a complete program.

The public charge element is a big concern, that these people do not end up in public charge.

I have talked to the officials of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the only ones who have the overall picture on this, and they indicate to us that the public charge element, after the first few months, is lower than the national average; in other words, these people are coming here to do something. They are not relief oriented. In Cuba they had jobs. They had houses. They supported themselves. These people are respectable people. They are moving in and becoming respectable people in our Nation.

This program is outstanding. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Cuban refugee program of the Government, has done an outstanding job.

As to the Miami situation, where there is a problem how many can be retained there, the bankers have come out, and they tell us in Miami, one, that these Cubans have moved into areas that have no potential tax value and that they have build up these areas, so now these areas are taxable areas. They have built up the areas of Miami that were slum areas, and they have beautiful green lawns. They have come down with some Members of the Congress and some of them have asked, "Where are the slum areas where these Cubans live, we want to see them." And you find that it is beautiful-little houses, green lawns, a lovely area.

They are spending in Miami, approximately, $8 million a month. I think that is the average of the economy down there.

Another question, another issue that has come up concerns a clipping that I have from the Washington Post. It showed that of about 2,000 doctors admitted to the United States-what does this mean to a naional economy? What was that figure that we have for the training of the doctors?

Mr. McLOONE. $300.

Mr. MCCARTHY. For the training of a doctor, I mean.

Mr. McLOONE. $40,000.

Mr. MCCARTHY. It costs the Federal Government in Federal grants, one way or another, to train a doctor that amount of money. We have moved into the United States 2,000 trained Cuban doctors. These are machines-let us make it very basic-these are machines worth $40,000 each. And we have 2,000 of them who are producing. That represents what, what is the figure there?

Mr. McLOONE. An $80 million investment.
Mr. MCCARTHY. That is for free.

We pay for the program, but I mean that these people are not coming in with their hands out and saying, "Give me." They are producers. They are adding to our national economy. Chairman KENNEDY. What percent does the National Catholic Welfare Conference spend-that is, how much of your money do you spend-what is your percent against that of the Federal Government?

Mr. MCCARTHY. At the present time we figure that our contract with the Federal Government will show, on the basis of the $100 a head, something in the neighborhood of $3 million this year's program. It is pretty close to that area.

What do we spend in this? How do you figure the time spent by a trained social worker in a diocese? And by our resettlement director in getting houses for these people? All of these are done without any charge whatsoever.

I received a bill the other day which is a prime example from one of the resettlement directors, spending $500 to resettle one of these families. All they said was to give them the $200 and that they will take care of the $300 remaining. That was a case in connection with the unaccompanied children program. There is just one on my desk right now. In other words, these children are brought to the United States-4 or 5 years ago they were put in a foster home under