Speech #800198180

It will aid by permitting these 200.000 to come into the United States in the next 2 years. Our maintenance expense will be reduced. as I say. and it will be a saving in money to the United States of approximately $100.000.000. It is claimed by some that these immigrants will take the jobs of American laborers. I have heard that story for 40 years. These fears have not yet been realized in the case of the older immigrants. If .anything they aid the American worker because invariably they take the hardest. most undesirable jobs that the American wage earner is not desirous of occupying. The American workers have thus been benefited. Let me say further that notwithstanding the great immigration that took place in the last hundred years. or even 50 years. our country did fairly well. We have increased our production and they have helped us do it. to a point where. as I have stated. we became the greatest. the richest. and the most powerful Nation in the world. Many of these immigrants who came before are relatives of those who will be admitted under this bill. I am sure they will demonstrate their worth and prove beneficial and helpful to our Nation. The only point that I wish to call to the committees attentionand I hope the members will bear with meis that the bill as drafted applies to those displaced persons who were in the displacedpersons camps prior to 1947. Unfortunately in April 1948. this year..a small country known as Czechoslovakia. that gained its independence and became a free nation as the result of the First World War and under the guidance and leadership of then President Wilson. now has refugees and displaced persons of its own. Within a short space of time that country. small though it was. set an example to the world of what could be accomplished in a few years after they were liberated from the shackles of the AustroHungarian monarchy. They became the outstanding democratic little nation of the world and set an example to other nations.