Speech #810012965

I am indeed grateful to the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. the gentleman from New York . for granting me the privilege of presenting this bill. which is very near to my heart. I am deeply grateful to the chairman of the subcommittee. the gentleman from Pennsylvania . for his fairness and nonpartisanship in reporting out my bill. for which I have been working so long. I first proposed before the Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 17. 1943. that such a change in our immigration laws be made. I had been a Member of Congress only 6 weeks. In May 1943. I proposed it specifically In testimony before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. My concern grew out of experience during the many years I lived in the Far East. In our efforts to help people there to understand Christian democracy. and to influence them to move in that direction themselves. frequently our biggest obstacle was the fact that in our socalled exclusion laws we had branded and stigmatized as inferior human beings the brown and yellow races. on the basis of the color of the pigment in their skin. something they were not responsible for and could not do anything about. This Is an attempt to remove that totally unnecessary insult and injustice and to establish equality in our immigration laws. not in numbers. but in principlethe same principle that applies to other peoples. Let me give you a bit of the history of how this problem developed. When gold was discovered out in California in 1848. and white men flocked to the west to get rich quick. there was immediate need for a lot of cheap labor. The best place to get it was across the Pacific. in China. When the transcontinental railroads were being built. especially the Southern cONGRESSI0NAL REcoRDHO USE Pacific. to hook up the west coast with the rest of the Nation. they needed laborers who were able to endure great hardships and would work for small returns. So there was unlimited immigration of Chinese laborers to this country. They did not come at their request. We went over there and recruited them.