Speech #680076235

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. section 10 of this bill provides that immigration quotas shall be based upon 2 per cent of the number of foreignhorn individuals of each nationality resident in the United States as deterlined by the census of 1890. The gentlemen who are opposed to this bill call attention to the discrinination which results from thus using the census of 1890. Those gentlemen would take the census of 1910 and determine the number of foreign born as disclosed by that census. I am advised that one of lUy colleagues is going to propose an alendment basing quotas upon the foreign born as of 1920. All the plans. you see. take into account the foreign born and no one else. The reason for tlis is perfectly clear. It is because this House in enacting the original quota law of 1921 made that mistake. It wits carried into the law at tllat tile and has been continued ever since. The point I want to emphasize In my few moments is the unwisdom and the unfairness of basing quotas only upon the foreign born. For my ptrt I do not see why we should measure immigrants only by the foreign horn in America. Why not pay some aittention to the American born in America? Have you who are American born no say whatever in this thing? Must we always measure the future of our own country by the numbers of foreigners who are here? Is it true that the United States is already a collection of foreign colonies rather than a nation of native Americans? . In what I have just been saying I have been paraphrasing the substance of it speech made a fortnight ago by an anthority on the immigration question. Henry H. Curran. commissioner of immigration at New York. I do not want to discriminate against the foreign born in this bill. I do not want to discri minate in favor of the foreign born and against the native sons of America. That is the whole qnesI