Speech #880204136

Denki Roren visitors to the United States. year after year make the same delicate but meaningful inquiry. The form of the question will vary but essentially it is the same always: "How can Americans profess to be close friends of Japan and of the Japanese people and still permit this offensive and insulting Japanese quota to persist? Dont Americans know what potent ammunition it provides to the Japanese Communists and dont we know how successfully the Japanese Communist Party and the Communist parties of southeast Asia have exploited the discriminatory quota system?" So it rankles as well as baffles our Japanese brothers and sisters. without their saying so you know that it hurts their pride and Japanese pride is a lofty and sensitive thing. Its not just difficult. its nearly impossible. for me and for other IUE representatives. to explain convincingly to our Denki Roren brethren why we should limit our democratic partner. Japan. to a quota of 185 immigrants a year while assigning our enemy. Soviet Russia. a total of 2.697 immigrants. Why is Japan. our strongest ally in Asia. held to fewer than 200 immigrants a year. while Iron Curtain Rumania is allowed 289. Iron Curtain Czechoslovakia 2.859. Iron Curtain Poland a whopping 6.488. and Communist Yugoslavia 942? Why should we bar all but 185 of our Japanese friends from entering the United States each year. while welcoming 865 immigrants from Communist Hungary. 235 from Communist Latvia. 384 from Communist Lithuania. and 250 from Fascist Spain? Oh. yes. of course we have given answers to our Japanese brothers and sisters. but the answers have never sounded fully convincing. if I were a Japanese I doubt that I would be convinced. Our answers have included the fact that of course the American labor movement is solidly opposed to this absurd. discriminatory Japanese quota. We tell them that the American labor movement helped to elect two recent administrationsthose of Presidents Truman and Kennedyand that we now support the administration of President Johnson. and that all three administrations were pledged. in expressions by the Presidents and in the party platforms. to wipe out the evil of national quotas. Sometimes. wide eyed. the Japanese check back on what youve said. "You mean." the Japanese will ask. "that you elect President after President who is opposed to unfair immigration quotas and you elect Congress after Congress that Is opposed to unfair immigration quotas and yet today you still have unfair immigration quotas?" As one of my associates put it: "When you hear your own words coming back at you like that you begin to feel like a faintly idiotic product of a faintly idiotic political system. So if the Japanese have been baffled by our paradoxical behavior. we as Americans have been baffled even more over how to sound like rational citizens instead of oafs. And the paradox becomes all the greater because we knowand our Japanese brothers and sisters know we knowthat very few Japanese would become emigrants to the United States today even if all bars were down. Japan. as the world is aware. today enjoys a boom economy. unemployment is practically nonexistent. Why then should any substantial number of Japanese want to leave a land of prosperity and full employment for a country 4.500 miles away victimized by mass unemployment and widespread poverty? They would not. of course. But after we have said all this three things stubbornly remain: First. the wounded pride of our Japanese friends who feel. not without cause. that they and their country are the object of our prejudice and discrimination. second. a nagging doubt among these Japanese friends that neither the democratic process in the United States nor democratic unionism are as effective as Americans would like the world to believe. at least where immigration is concerned. and third. the Communists of Japan and of southeast Asia continue to enjoy the propaganda ammunition that we provide in the national quota system while tens of thousands of desperate. hungry and homeless refugees wait and wait--and sometimes listen to the Communists. These. then. are the reasons that American labor wholeheartedly supports immigration reform: Reasons of our historic roots and our loyalty to the immigrant men and women of bygone years who gave American trade unions birth and the strength to survive and contribute to our Nations greatness. reasons of solidarity among the free nations and free labor movements of the world. and reasons. finally. of humanitarianism. compassion. and the encompassing. indestructible brotherhood of man.