Speech #820129507

The Director of the International Labor Organization has just announced plans for a migration of 1.750.000 of such persons in the next 5 years. As in the solution of the DP problem not only international action and financing will be needed but also the leadership of the United States in .taking a fair share of the surplus workers and their families--the same type of leadership that settled the DP problem. This bill would help to reopen the doors of the United States to immigration based on skill and usefulness instead of the restrictive and discriminatory immigration policy based on the nationalorigins quota system. It is necessary to the future of the United States for four reasons: First. the need for additional skilled manpower to realize the American production potential. to staff defense mobilization. and to give us elbow room in our population considering the world responsibilities which we must carry for the foreseeable future. second. to maintain the strategic balance between our own population and that of U. S. S. R.. third. to give viability to free Europe in terms of its population by permitting voluntary immigration of surplus workers and to enable it to strengthen its basic structure by improving standards of living and raising worker productivity for those who remain. and. fourth. to give leadership to a program for resettling these surplus workers by all nations of the free world having absorptive. capacity for immigrants. Manpower resources in the United States will be seriously strained by the defense mobilization program. Three to four million additional workers will be needed in the next few years.