Speech #710006395

It was decided then that. primarily for the purpose of cutting down the aggregate inflow. but secondarily to get a better balance between the northern and southern Europe. we would base it on the 1890 census. which was. taken before the sudden outflow of immigrants from southeastern Europe. It seemed to be more in accordance with the composition of the American population to take 1890 than to take 1910. But it was an artificial thing to go away back to a census then 34 years old. and it was taken only for want of something better. It was frankly adopted only as a temporary expedient. In that original act of 1924 for a permanent policy of the United States for all of the years to come it was provided that after three or four years to be spent on a study of those quotas under the nationalorigins plan. the national origins should be the permanent basis of apportioning immigration for all the years indefinitely into the future. Why was that fair? If we base inmigration on the 1890 cefisus. the foreign born only. obviously. we disregard everyone of us and people like us. Should it be based on the composition of a migration of the foreign born. half of whom were not even naturalized? Half of those people at the time that census was taken were not even American citizens. They were temporary lodgers within our borders.