Speech #820129507

Under my bill workers to be admitted with their families must show that they possess skills or can render services "beneficial to the national interest of the United States." Aliens must not have been firmly resettled in any other country previously. They must be qualified for admission on health and ideological grounds and assurance must be given of the availability of housing and a job without displacing any American in either. A selective Immigration Commission is provided to administer the act like the Displaced Persons Commission. Under the Displaced Persons program and the regular quota immigration program we have admitted an average of 205.000 permanent immigrants per year since 1948. With the Displaced Persons program ending December 31. unless we undertake some new program for immigration we will go back to the nationality quota system under which we are likely to average the admission of about 75.000 immigrants a year for permanent residence. about half the quota figure of 154.000 and about our average from the end of World War II to the beginning of the Displaced Persons program. This would be inconsistent with our needs and our position in the world. Under my bill immigration would continue at just about the rate we had for the last three years under the DP Act and with the same safeguards. This has certainly worked out well and settled substantially the DP problem. This is a very important change in the policy which we pursued for many years under the national origins quota immigration system. yet it is a change compelled onus by our own situation in the world and by the situation in the world in which we are trying to exercise intelligent and human leadership. I might point this out. Mr. Speaker. from a strategic point of view. The population of the Soviet Union. which is our principal rival in the world. is gaining rapidly. while ours is not making the progress it should if we are to keep pace. Strategic balance with the population of the Soviet Union will be lost unless we have a new immigration policy. It is estimated that in the next 20 years in the absence of such policy the population of the Soviet Union will be one and onehalf times our ownU. S.