Speech #880103464

Germany out of 25.814 allotted her used most of it. but some 3.000 were left untouched. The present law does not provide that unused quotas can be assigned to those waiting. Some of the figures on past immigration give interesting insights into the development of this country. By 1743. 30 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. more than a million immigrants and their descendants had populated the Thirteen Colonies. No records were kept before 1820. but between the years of 1821 and 1830 a total of 143.459 immigrant arrivals was recorded. In the 1840s 1.713.251 immigrants came to this country. In the 1860s there was some 2 million and in the 1870s there was almost 3 million. Then the restrictions began in 1882. Congress excluded paupers and criminals. and passed its first racial exclusion act barring the entry of the Chinese. In 1885. contract labor was also shut out. By 1917 a literacy test was required and all Asians were excluded. In 1907 the annual peak was reached with 1.285.349 entries for a single year. And in 1921. this country drastically restricted immigration by establishing the first limitation on numbers of immigrants. and in 1924. the national origins quota system was made permanent. What this did was to establish large quotas for countries of Northern and Western Europe. and ridiculously low quotas for countries from Southern and Eastern Europe. and hardly any for the countries of Asia. The discrimination thus is obvious. and it is this discrimination that the President. in his new proposal. seeks to eliminate. Make no mistake about it. What the President urges is fundamental reform. Each year. for 5 years. all quota numbers will be reduced 20 percent until the national origins system is abolished completely. This 20percent reduction each year will go into a reserve pool and will be used to select immigrants on the basis of their skills. their relationship to our needs. the reuniting of families on a priority basis. No one country can receive more than 10 percent of the total quota numbers authorized in any 1 year. Thus. no one country will have an undue advantage over the other. and all peoples will have equality of opportunity to enter the United States within the categories I set forth before.