Speech #800185428

The most common figure cited Is 6.000.000. Yesterday. on this floor. we heard the assertion that there were five or six million aliens now in this country. The fact Is. as was extensively testified to by the Commissioner of Immigration. that in June 1947 there were considerably less than 3.000.000 aliens in this countrya number which was then aind had been for many years rapidly decreasing. as the people who were admitted in the unlimited immigration era of the last century grew old and died or attained naturalization. Similar assertions related to an allegedly huge infix of illegal immigrants. This is not the time nor the place to examine in detail the mass of confusion and even misrepresentation which has surrounded this subject. I will say only this: Regardless of what the situation may have been before the war. the shipping since the war has made the task of coming to the United States or Mexico or Canada. legally and illegally. extremely difficult. When there is added to that difficulty the constantly increasing stringency of our own. as well as Canadian and Mexican. immigration enforcement. it makes entirely plausible the statement of the Commissioner of Immigration that illegal entries by persons who come from overseas have not in recent years exceeded a number in the very low hundreds annually. But I do not wish to spend time arguing the confused and confusing details which surround the general immigration problem. I do not believe we are prepared to discuss that problem. as we consider the bill before us. particularly. inasmuch as the subcommittee appointed to study it has admittedly not completed its study. I furthermore do not wish to discuss It at this point. because I do not believe it is relevant to the problem before the Senate. I do not agree with the statement of the able Senator from West Virginia that this problem has a direct bearing on the immigration policy of this country. It was the plain determination of this body last year. at the time when Senate Resolution 137 was agreed to. that the question whether displaced persons should be admitted should be kept entirely separate from the question of general immigration policy. and I am sure that all the Senators present at that debate recall the stress which was put on the point that the legislation proposed for the admission of displaced persons was to be of a temporary emergency character and was not in any way to be construed as relaxing or in any way changing the general immigration policy of this country. until that policy is changed by a specific act of Congress. Another thinly veiled suggestion which stands constantly in the way of a realistic attack on this problem is that there is substantial danger of Communist infiltration through bringing in displaced persons. Mr.