Speech #840144697

Mr. Speaker. the Secretary of State. John Foster Dulles. advised us on March 1. 1956. that an appraisal of the program of operations under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. as amended. indicates that about 50.000 visas of the 209.000 nonquota visas allocated under that act would remain unused at the termination date of the program which is December 31. 1956. I see no reason why the visas allocated by the Congress should remain unused. but. at the same time I do not see why we should extend the lifetime of a very expensive administration which is in charge of that program. I have today introduced a bill which would terminate that expensive operation on the date fixed by the Congress but would permit the use of the entire allocation of visas to those people for whom the Congress intended to provide resettlement opportunities in the United States. The ethnic groups affected would be the Greeks. natives of the Netherlands. Italians. German expellees and antiCommunist Chinese. as well as war orphans of all nationalities. The Immigration and Nationality Act. often referred to as the WalterMcCarran Act. would be fully applicable. The escapees from Communist oppression would benefit under one of the sections of my bill which would restore the full use of annual quotas to natives of countries taken over by Soviet Russia. namely. the Baltic countries. Poland. Czechoslovakia. Rumania. Hungary. and so forth. as well as to Greeks who have an extremely small immigration quota for their usea quota amounting to only 308 annually. There is one more feature of my bill which I believe will meet with the approval of the Congress. In view of the progress made by medical science. we can now afford. without injuring our citizens. to admit in the name of enlightened humanitarianism a relatively small number of people afflicted with tuberculosis and to place them in institutions prepared to take care of them.