Speech #820209484

It is one which is abandoned in the bill now under discussion. This bill freezes racial discrimination into our statutes. instead of eradicating it when we have an opportunity to do so. Every immigrant who takes a job and earns money becomes a consumer. He spends money as well as earns it. Even the money he sends back home in dollars to Italy or elsewhere must be spent. The dollars which go abroad must come back. as dollars. The work that he does strengthens us. and money he earns and spends strengthens our economy regardless of where he may send it. As Representative RGDINO declaredhearings on Senate bill 716. page 729: It is to be noted that our periods of greatest expansion coincided with our periods of greatest immigration. It is also not to be disregarded that those States with the largest population percentages of immigration are also the States of greatest prosperity. The question asked by the Senator from Michigan opens up the whole subject of the economics of immigration. I could talk at length on this but it is a different speech and not so germane to the bill which we have under discussion. in my judgment. as the points I have been trying to emphasize today. It is not comparable in importance to the other facets of the bill. I should now like to sum up briefly some of the facets which make the McCarran bill so flagrantly wrong and so manifestly against our national interest. The bill makes some aliens deportable without a hearingsections 242 (f). 252b. 273. It makes an alien deportable If at any time it is discovered that he suffered a nervous breakdown. let us say. within 5 years after he came to the United Statessection 241a3. It gives uncontrolled discretion to deport an alien because he went on reliefsection 241a8. It ends the statute of limitations on deportation casessection 241a. It is retroactive and ex post facto by its application of the penalty of deportation to conduct in the past which. at the time. under the then law. was not grounds for deportationsection 241d. Section 2550 cuts down greatly the existing discretion of the Attorney General to suspend deportation in deserving hardship casessection 244. and to allow aliens to enter when after a short visit to Canada they try to return to their home of many yearssection 212c. . In many instances it limits court review by permitting the Attorney General to act according to a subjective standard. his own. and requiring that the alien prove his case "to the satisfaction" or "in the opinion" of the Attorney General241c. 246. 206. 212a27. 212a29. 212a15. I have previously pointed out that these phrases occur approximately 101 times in the bill. It subordinates in their preference under immigration quotas. the parents of American citizenssection 203a2. It bars from naturalization those aliens who cannot write Englishsection It imposes a literacy test on arriving aliens. ending the present exception for the persecuted and elderly parents of citizenssection 212a25who often have had no chance to study English or learn English. inasmuch as often the teaching of English is not available in their native communities. This bill excludes aliens convicted of trumpedup. socalled nonpolitical crimes in Fascist and Communist countries even though the charges in effect. were actually politicalsection 212a10as in the Cardinal Mindszenty case. which has been mentioned earlier today. Under the McCarran bill. a Brazilianborn citizen of Chinese blood is not admissible as a Brazilian. but must come under a racial ancestry quota of 105 for Chinese all over the worldsection 202. All Asiatics. no matter where they are born. are limited to a similar quota. Under this bill. any alien who is convicted of even one traffic offense. if the Attorney General finds him to be an undesirablesection 241a4even though he has been here for years. can be deported. The bill excludes those who make a material misrepresentation having its roots in fear of racial persecutionsection 212a19. It punishes a whole people by denying them visas if their Communist government refuses to accept one of its nationals whom we wish to deportsection 243g. Madam President. these are all new provisions in this new McCarran bill. The bill is not merely a codification. It is a complete revision of the immigration laws. Furthermore. it is a revision which looks backward. instead of forward. The bill is founded upon the unreasonable premise that immigration is bad and the unsound idea that aliens are suspects and that we should keep them out and deport them on almost any grounds by administrative absolutism. and with as little court review as is possible under the Constitutionand. in some cases. less than the Constitution requires. In the sense in which this new McCarran bill is a codification. it continues in the immigration laws many provisions which never belonged in the law to begin with. Most of them were inserted within the last year or two. Such provisions deport and bar a person from citizenship. because of past conduct in joining a subversive organization. even though he was wholly ignorant of the organizations activities when he joinedsection 212a28. 313C. The bill visits these consequences on anyone who joined "the direct predecessor or successor" of a Communist organizationsection. 212a28c. It deports persons who joined. and who then. after realizing their wrong. resigned. even though such persons have become successful fighters against communismsection 241A6. It denaturalizes an alien who votes in an Italian election to fight communismsection 349 (5)-even though he is ignorant of the provision of United States law which deprives him of his American citizenship. The pending bill permits the deportation of an alien to any country that will t ke him. even though he will there be subject to racial persecutionsection 243 a and h. It exempts immigration hearing examiners from the Administrative Procedure Act. by providing that they are to hold their offices only at the pleasure of their superiors. instead of retaining the judicial independence granted to their brother examiners in other Federal administrative hearing agencies. The bill thus denics them the independence and protection from influence which the McCarran and Walter Administrative Procedure Act assures for all hearing examinerssection 101b4. Madam President. the bill continues those restrictive provisioas of the quota system under which the quotas of northwest Europe are unused. while Poles. Lithuanians. Czechs. Italians. and other refugees from eastern and southern Europe cannot come because their quotas are oversubscribed and mortgaged for years in advancesection 202. Madam President. I hope I do not now have to spell out in detail for our colleagues how the foregoing consequences of this bill can play havoc with the objectives of our foreign policy. These consequences are not items of concern to us on our domestic policies only. After World War I. when the 1924 act was passed. we regarded immigration as purely a domestic affair. So. too. when we first set up a quota in 1921. It became. however. a source of great international irritation.