Speech #800198405

Today there are suffering thousands of freedom seekers yearning for a new life in a new worlddisplaced persons uprooted from their native lands. with no place to goinnocent victims of war. who endured all the Hitler terror only to find the road to freedom blocked eyen after victory. Relieving their miseryrestoring them to normal livingwill remove one great source of tension in uneasy Europe. The world waits for us. the children of the pilgrims. to point the way. to set the pace for immigration to all the many lands where displa~ed people can settle. The United States today is moving into the arena of world politics as a self -designated champion of the free peoples. A good part of the world looks with doubt on this move as a play for unbridled power. Protests of good intention will carry little conviction if so clearly cut a moral challenge as the refugee problem is bypassed. Let us prove our concern for free peoples by giving them a chance to be free. American leadership in this matter does not involve the rash. unconsidered lowering of barriers. since all of the usual tests of fitness will be applied there is very little likelihood that the wrong kind of immigrants will be admitted. The requirements of financial guaranty for every immigrant will make it virtually impossible for newcomers to become public charges. while careful screening by the FBI and the Army certifies moral and physical wellbeing. There is no danger to our quota system of immigration and no possibility of an excess of immigration beyond our power to assimilate. Our country is now suffering from a shortage of doctors. nurses. farm laborers. garment workers. and a hundred and one other professional and trades people. There are many such people among the displaced persons. most of those who will finally come have relatives here and all must have guarantors. A goodly number of these people have a long agricultural bacground and they could. in my judgment. be distributed in the farming areas of America to the great benefit of our country. Many of them have a dairy background and they contribute a group of people who could be used in the dairy industry of this country. If we distribute these immigrants widely enough in accordance with their special skills and economic background we shall have adequate room for them in this country without upsetting. in any degree. our own economic and social stability. These people woul -1 be a genuine national asset. They are in a real sense. chosen people5eople who have been chosen by a ruthless process of natural selection. They are the people who resisted totalitarianism from its beginning. who had courage enough and were tough enough to survive all its efforts to extinguish them. They are people who prize freedomprize it enough to have suffered for it deeply. They are the kind of people in whose behalf the American tradition of asylum was established and whose immigration to these shores has enriched our society from its earliest days forward. The scientific. mechanical. and other skills together with the culture brought by these immigrants will be permanent contributions to our national welfare. We boast of the many contributions made by our ancestors who came here from other lands. our history books are filled with the achievements of immigrants. Shall we now. by inadequate action. in effect erase and blot out that famous Christian apothegm. written at the base of our Statue of Liberty: "Send these. the homeless. tempesttossed. to me"? National organizations of all descriptions. representing church groups. labor organizations. university and professional groups. and others. .have passed resolutions and recorded themselves in favor of this legislatipn.