Speech #840233590

Mr. President. we owe no apology to any nation. Our country has had and still has the most liberal immigration laws in the world. We have received a greater number of displaced persons and refugees than any other country in the world and because of certain liberalizing features of the present Immigration and Nationality Act. the numbers coming into our .country steadily Increase every year. The proposed substitute. while not obviously destroying the national origins quota system. is a virtual overturn of the principles. and sets a precedent for complete destruction of the system. It would transfer from northern and Western Europe 18.500 quota numbers to the countries of southern and Eastern Europe. which received lower quotas than countries with larger contributions to our population and tradition. It is a radical departure from the theory of trying to maintain the cultural pattern of our immigration in accord with the composition of our population. It is of serious consequence to our historic American institutions and our American way of life. Remember. Mr. President. since the Second World War. this country has already opened its gates to over a million refugees and displaced persons by way of special legislation of one kind or another. all in derogation of the historic pattern of our immigration policy. I do not impugn the dignity or worth of any society when I point out that our system for admitting immigrants should be geared to the cultural background of our own people. I know. Mr. President. from my service on the Internal Security Subcommittee. of which I had the honor of being chairman in the previous Congress. that the Communist conspiracy directs continuous overtures toward those nationality blocs in this country which have an affinity to traditions and a society alien to the concepts of freedom upon which our Nation was built. I say it is serious business for this Senate to so drastically revise the whole underlying theory of our immigration system with so little deliberation or consideration. This departure from the basic principles of our immigration system would be further extended by that provision of the substitute bill which would remove the mortgages on the quotas of certain countries because of the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. as amended. Mr. President. under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. we brought into this country approximately onehalf million displaced persons. virtually all of whom came from the lowquota countries of southern and eastern Europe. The law provided that up to 50 percent of the quotas of countries from which these people came could be charged in any one year. but that they should all be charged against the appropriate quotas for some years. Now. the substitute bill would sweep away those quota charges which were made to help people who. in fact. did emigrate to the United States and who are here now as part of our society. The effect of this is not only to increase immigration to this country by approximately another onehalf million. but also to further the violation of the basic policy of our country under the national origins quota system. This basic policy of our immigreation system would be further violated by the proposal of the substitute bill to transfer for use under the general immigration law some 50.000 unused quota numbers originally set up to be used under the socalled Refugee Relief Act.