This research report presents the ways that Jewish relief agencies assist recently-arrived Russian-Jewish immigrants. Issues regarding services provided, including education, and financial resources and agency problems are discussed.
Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York, has become the home for an estimated 60,000 Russians, most of them Jewish, beginning with the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants in the early 1970s. Earliest immigrants were usually escapees from the anti-Semitic Soviet regime in the Ukraine. Current arrivals come to the United States to escape persecution from fellow Russians; many arrive with money, unlike their predecessors who tended to bring high academic qualifications only. Law enforcement officials state that the Russians are also bringing organized crime.
There has been a drop in Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union to the United States. Immigration is down from 36,000 per year in the early 1990s to 21,000 for the past two years. The flow to Israel has remained at 65,000 per year since 1992. Jewish immigration sources with ties to the former soviet Union, state that the main reason for the drop is a concern among possible emigres over employment and welfare in the United States. A further drop is predicted after the adoption of a new welfare bill which limits benefits. Martin Wenick, executive vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society states that the size of the decline is due to artificial control of the number of immigrants allowed to come to the United States, rather than economic issues. A backlog of around 60,000 people in the former Soviet Union are waiting to be interviewed in moscow for United States immigration. Around 600,000 Jews remain in Russia, 400,000 remain in the Ukraine, and 90,000 remain in the six Muslim republics.
The International Refugee Organization was a temporary agency of the United Nations, established in 1946. It was to arrange for...