Speech #870005052

President. I shall detain the Senate very briefly. The measure which I am introducing must be taken together with the measure introduced by my distinguished colleague from New York as part of a package on immigration legislation. My colleague. the Senator from New York . with the same cosponsors. will introduce a bill to cover the phase which relates to refugees. displaced persons and escapees from various. forms of tyranny. including the Castro tyranny. That part which I am introducing as the principal sponsor relates to the amendment of the immigration laws to realine the quota system and to eliminate many injustices now contained in the present immigration laws. Mr. President. under the provisions of the bill being introduced by my colleague. the Senator from New York . and the cosponsors on his bill. nonquota visas for up to 40.000 refugeeescapees would be provided. These would include those fleeing from Communist persecution or from the Middle East and other areas where forces are at work against the free world. The undiminished flow of such refugees is confirmed by the latest estimates based on State Department information: In 1960. 200.000 East Germans escaped to West Germany. more than half of them through. the great door to liberty provided by West Berlin. and 10.000 nonGerman refugees also fled from European Iron Curtain countries. 110.000 Chinese sought refugee in Hong Kong. Right next door to the United States at least 30.000 Cubans fled the Castro regime. mostly to this country. In addition. this bill would authorize the President to parole into the United States refugeeescapees from future upheavals. such as the Hungarian uprising of 1956. This power could be employed to aid people fleeing from the tyranny of a Castro or similar tyrant. the Senators indicated. The second bill. which is being introduced by me. my colleague . and Senators CASE of New Jersey. MORSE. SALTONSTALL. and SCOTT. deals primarily with immigration matters. It would revise and modernize the national quota system to reflect the 1960 rather than the 1920 census. During the past 40 years. the U.S. population increased by some 75 million people and this would be reflected in the increase of annual immigration to the United States from 155.000 to about 300.000an expansion fully justified by the greater absorption of our population and of our national wealth which had quadrupled in these four decades. This bill would also permit the pooling of unused quotas and their reallocation by Executive order of the President. Another provision would allow the admission of fourthpreference quota immigrants approved by the Attorney General prior to July 1. 1957. without reference to quota. During the past 6 years. only 574.000 quota numbersor 62 percent of the potential U.S. quota of 930.000 over that periodwere actually used for immigration. The reason for the large percentage of unused quota numbers is that the two quota areas located in the British Isles do not use the major part of the quotas allotted to them. In fiscal 1960. these two areas accounted for 48.000 unused quota numbersor 94 percent of all the quota numbers not used.