Speech #850077649

Mr. President. probably in every nationI know the mail Senators have received on this question show this for our ownsome people are apprehensive of the immigration of large new groups of people with a foreign language and cultural background. because of the feared impact of such immigration on existing social and economic patterns. I invite Senators to study. in this light. the hospitality which other free democracies of Europe and the British Commonwealth. with far smaller populations and national incomes than ours. have offered the Hungarian refugeesand to compare it with our own. Let me cite a few examples. Our northern neighbor. Canada. has accepted more than 5 times the proportion of Hungarian escapees. on a percapita basis. than we have. and 9 times as many as we in proportion to national income. Overcrowded Britain. many of whose people are themselves trying to emigrate. opened its doors to twice as many Hungarians as we. per capita. and five times as many compared to wealth. The proportion is even. more flattering to the Netherlands. which also is faced with its own problem of overpopulation and emigration. The best record has been made by tiny Switzerland. which has admitted over 20.000 Hungarians. With 6 times as many people per square mile as the United States. the Swiss have nevertheless been more hospitable than the United States by 11 times. relative to population. and 21 times relative to our respective wealth. Austria. with an area of only 32.370 square milesless than Mainesand a population of 7 million. and itself only recently freed from Communist domination. has actually assimilated more refugees than the United States. with an area of 3.022.390 square miles and a population of 170 million. As many as 250.000 refugees from every eastern European nation. have poured into Austria in the last 2 years. We cannot expect Austria also to assume responsibility for the 33.000 Hungarians still in refugee camps there. There are also almost 20.000 Hungarian refugees living behind barbed wire enclosures in Yugoslavia. whose future depends to a large degree on the decisions which we make about American immigration policy.