Speech #820209392

Escapees from the Communist terror are now said to number 200.000 each yearand to be increasing month by month. The surplus population of Italy is a matter of the gravest concern to our own Government and to international peace. The unsolved Arab refugee problem is a gnawing cancer in the Middle East. The 2.000.000 refugees in West Germany of ethnic German originthe socalled sullen strangers expelled from their homes farther eastthreaten to contaminate the German economy and people. . The movement of populations from the Old World to the State of Israel creates major economic. political. and social problems for that infant Republic. Population pressures in India. Japan. and the lands of southeast Asia are kept uppermost on the agendas of the diplomats. both here and abroad. Some idea of the magnitude of these population problems is revealed by the fact that approximately 90 percent of the total cumulative budget of the United Nations. excluding the International Bank and Fund. has been devoted to dealing with refugee and relief problems. UNRRA repatriated more than 7.000.000 people to their native lands. The IROthe first really effective international migration agency in historyhelped settle more than a million refugees in 113 different countries. The present office of the high commissioner for refugees is devoted to the legal protection of about 1.500.000 unfortunates *wherever they may reside. The U. N. agency for Palestine refugees has projected a vast program of resettlement in the Near East. Another U. N. agency is working with refugees in Korea. Recently a new international agency began work in Brussels to take over some of the operating functions of the defunct IRO. The Soviet Union is of course holding fast to all populations within its grasp. while exploiting all population tensions in the free world. During World War II. the United States repealed its Oriental Exclusion Act as applied to our Chinese Allies. This seemed to foreshadow a great postwar shift of our refugee policy toward direct support of international efforts. The bill under discussion today runs counter to this important change in policy. Instead of repealing some of the unhappy concepts now upon our statute books. it invents new ones and seeks to fasten them upon us.