Speech #680070965

If I jump from topic to topic according to questions as I go along. I will never get anywhere and my statement will not be of any special use to the Senate. I want to speak again of our quota law enacted In 1921. That was based on our foreignborn population as shown by the census of 1910. We had. according to that census. 13.515.000 persons living here who were born abroad. and the quota was fixed at 3 per cent of the number of thqse foreign born. If the whole foreignborn population were divided as the chart shows. then naturally the 3 per cent quota was distributed as the chart shows. that is to say. 48 per cent of the persons admissible under that quota law were from northern and western Europe and 39 per cent from southern and eastern Europe. When that quota law was enacted immigration was coming in a tremendous volume from southern and eastern Europe. and the quotas assigned to the southern and eastern European nations were immediately taken. They sent their full quota in the first two years that the law was in force. The northern and western European countries did not. The German quota was not half taken in the first year. and the British quota was not taken. It looked as though the effect of the quota law was going to be to shut off the southern and eastern European countries. while northern and western Europe was shut off by its own disinclination to come. Then began to have their effect these motives and forces leading to emigration from all the European countries. In the fiscal year that ended July 1. 1923. the British quota was completely taken. In the present fiscal year the British quota was taken in the first five months of the year. which is as rapidly as we permit it to be used up. We do not allow more than 20 per cent of any nations quota to come in in any one month. But in the first Ilve months of this year the quota of practically all the European nations wts used up. and for the last seven months of the current fiscal year the immigration is practically suspended. At the present moment. out of a total quota of 357.000 persons. the number who have actually come in is 354.000. so that for the remaining three months of the fiscal year we can have only 3.000 immigrants. The only country that seems not likely to use up its entire quota Is Iceland. which has a quota of 75 persons. The figures I have quoted show the pressure for admittance and show the method by which we are regulating that pressure.