Speech #870024884

Mr. Speaker. the bill I have introduced today has a twofold purpose. It is designed to facilitate the reunion of separated families and. at the same time. to benefit a considerable number of skilled immigrants whose services have been determined by the Attorney General to be urgently needed in the United States. but who cannot be issued a first preference visa solely because a quota number is unavailable. In recent years the Congress has attacked the problem of backlogged immigration quotas by enacting special legislation which afforded only nominal relief and provided no real remedy for the problem. Quotas of many countries continue to be heavily oversubscribed. while other countries. notably Great Britain. and Ireland. fail to use their allotted quotas year after year to a very substantial degree. It is estimated that approximately onethird of all authorized quota numbers remain unsued at the end of each fiscal year. and are consequently discarded. One of the underlying principles of our immigration laws is the preservation of the family unit. The instant bill is Intended to give meaning and reality to that principle. The problem of backlogged quotas is attributable in large part to the great disparity between the size of quotas proclaimed for certain northern European countries and the size of quotas proclaimed for all other countries throughout the world. For example. three countries of northern Europe are assigned 70 percent of the overall annual quota of 155.000 and the other quota countries. about 100 in number. variously divide the remaining 30 percent of the overall quota. These quotas were computed under the national origins formula which Congress wrote into the Immigration Act of 1924 and carried forward in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. They range from the minimum quota of 100 per annum to the maximum quota of 65.361 proclaimed for Great Britain and Northern Islands. In addition to bringing families together and hastening the entry of hundreds of skilled aliens. this bill will tend to alleviate the hopeless predicament which faces many prospective immigrants whose chances of ever being reached on the waiting list are extremely remote. particularly the nonpreference immigrant. To the extent that the quota numbers now unused are made available for the issuance of visas to aliens within the preference classes. more numbers will become available for the issuance of visas to aliens in the nonpreference class. The vast majority of refugees fall in the nonpreference category. The redistribution of unused quota numbers on a regional basis is not a new idea. It was first broached by President Eisenhower in his message of February 8. 1956. to the Congress and repeated on other occasions. This proposal does not increase the overall quota of 155.000 established for all quota countries nor does it relax in the slightest degree any of the substantive conditions which every alien must meet before he is issued an immigrant visa and admitted into the United States. The bill simply authorizes the use of the present quotas to the fullest extent possible within the framework of existing law except for the national origins concept. Specifically. this bill authorizes the Secretary of State to create four regional quotas representing Europe.