Speech #830100127

I think most of my colleagues are aware of that interest. It dates back a long time. I have been working in the immigration field. in one connection or another. for the past 30 years. both as a public official and as a private citizen. As Director General of UNRRA. I had immediate responsibility for the heartrending flood of refugees and displaced persons which inundated Western Europe and reached into the Middle East and even the Far East. as a consequence of the most destructive. the most cataclysmic war of all time. The refugee problem with which I dealt in UNRRA still forms part of the refugee situation which confronts us today. I was very greatly interested in the public movement which led to the passage by the Congress of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. In 1950. as a Member of the Senate. I took part in securing the amendment to the Displaced Persons Act which were so urgently needed and which were. indeed. enacted in that year. The refugees and displaced persons. the uprooted and the distressed. the fugitives from slavery. the escapees from tyranny. the battered driftwood of war and of political and social upheavals unexampled in historythese are the human beings with whose plight the free world has tried to cope and must continue to cope now and in the foreseeable future. The displaced persons program was a magnificent contribution to the solution of that vast problem. Other countries. notably Canada and Australia. did their part. too. But that problem has not become alleviated. It has become intensified. World War II was succeeded by the Cold war. and the stream of refugees pouring into the free world has increased rather than lessened. In March 1952. President Truman proposed to the Congress an emergency immigration program. Unfortunately. no action was taken on it. Instead the Congress passed. over the Presidents veto. the McCarranWalter Act. In February of 1953 President Eisenhower recommended an emergency immigration program. That program. in legislative form. is before the Senate now. As one who has been. as I have already recalled. deeply involved in the problem upon which we are today legislating.