Mr. Speaker and Memebers of the House. recently President Coolidge. at the request of the Senate. submitted to that body the figures that will be proclaimed as the immigration quotas. to become operative 90 days after April 1. unless we promptly take action. as originally suggested by me in a bill introduced on May 7. 1926. and reintroduced on the first day of this session. repealing the socalled. nationalorigins method of establishing quotas. as provided by section 11 of the immigration act of 1924. A year ago a postponement of the operation of nationalorigins based quotas was affected. with the understanding that the interdepartmental committee. delegated by Congress to ascertain the quotas. would continue its exhaustive search and efforts to arrive at something like accurate. rational origin figures on which might be based the quotas. The interdepartmental committee. consisting of the Secretary of State. the Secretary of Commerce. and the Secretary of Labor. appointed as its representatives to do this exacting work a committee of statistical and census experts. These latter. however. discovering that the job was impossible of performance by scientific procedure. since the necessary facts. census figures. and historical data are not available. instead of revamping their previously obtained figures after some sort of certain or factfinding compilations that might justify their altering of the previously ridiculously inaccurate computations took it upon themselves to act in total disregard and flagrant violation of subdivision C of section 11 of the immigration act of 1924. by acting. by their own admissions. arbitrarily. in reducing and increasing certain of the quotas that will be made law shortly unless we act. Imagine arbitrary guesswork being substituted for the clearly defined method that the act provided should be employed to establish these vitally important quota figures. The previous quota figures were the result of at least some pretense of making an investigation of facts and census tables.
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immigration