Mr. Chayes. That is correct. It would also be made, and be made automatically in the case of persons belonging to trade unions not in leadership positions in the trade union, and where there is no external evidence of active participation, because membership in the union is a condition of employment in those places in the Soviet Union, and our regulations cover the point precisely.
Mr. Coleman. Now the other decision that was made was that the Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service would waive the provisions of section 243(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act which provision says that a visa could not be issued from Moscow because the Attorney General in 1953 had placed Russia among those countries that refused to accept Russian citizens that we wanted to send back to Russia.
Mr. Chayes. Yes; 243(g) is a sanction which the act provides against countries, not against people. It is not a disqualification for a person. If 243(g) had not been waived, Mrs. Oswald would simply have gone to Rotterdam and gotten the same visa from our consulate in Rotterdam. It is a sanction against the country which is levied when, as you say, the Attorney General determines that the country refuses to accept people whom we deport who are their nationals. It gets back a little to the point you were making yesterday about what obligation one has to accept his own nationals back from another country.
Mr. Dulles. That is a general rule of international law, isn't it, you are supposed to do it.
Mr. Chayes. Yes; as a general rule of international law I suppose one should accept his own nationals, but people who have expatriated themselves wouldn't be nationals and therefore we wouldn't have to take them back.
In any event—that is a little digression—but this sanction is a sanction designed to penalize a country which has refused to receive back its own nationals when they are deported from the United States. That sanction was brought into play by the determination of the Attorney General made on May 26, 1953.
Mr. Dulles. I wonder whether in addition to the information that Mr. Ford has requested, you could give us information, oh, say covering the last 5 or 10 years——
Mr. Chayes. I think we have already.
Mr. Dulles. I haven't said what I want it on. With regard to the time that has elapsed between the application of a Soviet woman married to an American citizen, the time that is taken from her application to the time that that application has been favorably acted upon by the Soviet Union. In this case as far as I understand it, the Soviet Union gave permission for Mrs. Oswald to come either in December 1961 or January 1962, and that because of this particular sanction you have just been discussing, it wasn't really cleared up until May. And therefore that the delay was in part a delay due to American regulations rather than to Soviet regulations.
Mr. Chayes. Well, her processing in the Soviet Union from the time she first started to try to get back——