Madam President. on behalf of myself. my colleague . the Senator from Oregon . the Senator from Massachusetts . the Senator from New Jersey . and the Senator from Pennsylvania . I introduce. for appropriate reference. a new bill to bring about a basic overhaul in our national immigration policy. It seems to me that this is a very important piece of legislation. At a time when we are discussing civil rights for the people of the United States. there is also the problem of civil rights for the other peoples of the world. and I believe this bill represents an effort to provide civil rights in terms of American peace leadership for all the world. The time has come to end the piecemeal approach to immigration reform. Our national immigration policy has produced an incredible epic of broken lives. divided familiescase after case of anguish. despair. and frustration. During the campaign in 1960. the President made a pledge to give high priority to immigration reform. The President has shied away from this critical issue. As a Senator. he was an eloquent fighter for immigration reform. as President. he has been virtually unheard from. It is particularly timely that we give our attention to immigration legislation now. when we are testing our own civil rights as Americans. for. in a real sense. immigration legislation represents civil rights legislation for the world. Also. we are in a critical stage in the struggle for an open world among the free nations. and an enlightened immigration policy by our country would be an enormous contribution toward that national policy objective. Basic immigration reform has for the last 10 years been bedeviled by legislative handouts to deal with particular situations which most glaringly exposed the false direction of our immigration policy. These handouts have included measures dealing with the special problems of the Azores. sheepherders. freedom fighters from Hungary. and some effort to deal with the backlog of immigration which separated families. Desirable as were each of these items. in totality whey were used to block really fundamental immigration reform. In the national interest. it is time to end this selfdelusion and to forgo. if necessary. these individual items in order to fight for and to win an immigration policy of which the country can be proud. not ashamed. The main features of the bill are as follows: First. It provides for the determination of annual quotas on the basis of the 1960 census instead of the 1920 census as provided for by existing law.
Keywords matched
immigration