Speech #880228680

Other countries with vastly larger populations and whose people have much to offer the United States are given tiny quotas. The comparison right away puts in question the honesty of the quotas. The law does illogical things like granting only conditional citizenship to naturalized citizens. This works enormous and illogical hardships. sometimes quite by accident. The law makes no provision for emergency world refugee problems. such as that which followed on the heels of the October 1956 revolt in Hungary. Now let us examine briefly the history of the present law. the McCarranWalter Act. The general lines of present American policy were laid down in the years just after 1918. Prior to World War I all laws restricting immigration into the United States were qualitative in character. that is. they excluded only persons who failed to pass certain minimal tests of health. literacy. and good conduct. Thus the quota law of 1921 and more importantly the JohnsonReed Immigration � Act of 1924 represented a drastic change in American policy. The JohnsonReed Act limited the total number of immigrants who could enter in the United States in any one year to 150.000 and also established the nationalorigins quota system. This system provided that the annual quota for any nationality should bear the same ratio to 150.000 as the number of inhabitants of the United States in 1920 of that nationality bore to the total number of "inhabitants of the United States in 1920." The purpose of the act was to freeze the thenexisting national structure of the American population. It went further and defined "inhabitants of the United States in 1920" so as to exclude "descendents of slave immigrants. that is. almost the entire Negro population. The JohnsonReed Act. with its builtin bias against the southern and eastern Europeans and nonwhites from Asia and Africa. remains to this day the basic American immigration statute. The law has. however. been amended and modified from time to time. The most important of these changes took place in June 1952 with the passage. over President Trumans veto. of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. generally known as the McCarranWalter Act. This act codified in one comprehensive statute the multitude of immigration and nationality laws which had been passed by 1952. It generally retained and perpetuated the features of earlier statutes which fixed nationality quotas and limited annual immigration. Most importantly. and most unfortunately. it retained the national origins system intact as the basis for quotas. The 1952 act made slight adjustments in the ban against Asian and Pacific peoples. eliminated discrimination between the sexes. and gave quota preferences to skilled aliens. The JohnsonReed Act. as modified by McCarranWalter. still governs American immigration law. The chief errors. fallacies. and weaknesses of the early laws remain on the statute books. They are mainly errors in concepts and attitudes. The total quota figure is not so important. no countrys problems. neither the sending countrys nor the receiving countrys. are going to be solved by vast new numbers. But even here weaknesses are apparent because law and reality have drifted apart. During the past 10 years about 1.500.000 people could have entered the United States under the national quota system. In fact. 2.500.000 persons entered the country. Of these only about 1 million came in under the regular quotas. All of the remaining 1.500.000 entered under a variety of special regulations. arrangements. and legislative enactments. The fact that these special arrangements have been made implies deep dissatisfaction with the existing law. the fact that they have been necessary suggests that the time is ripe for reform. In their 1960 platforms both parties pledged the adoption of positive immigration programs aimed at rectifying inadequacies in our present policy. Senator Kennedy. campaigning for President in 1960. repeatedly referred to immigration as a top priority issue. His suggestions for change. as President Eisenhowers before him. have largely gone unheeded. Congress has been content to tinker with the immigration laws. The edges have been touched up from time to time. but nothing has ever been done to the center. The reason. I think. is indifference. But this may be changing as more Americans become aware of the inJustice of the national origins system and of its deleterious effect on foreign policy. It must be remembered that immigration policies and procedures are often the first and only personal contact that peoples of other countries have with the United States. Finally. Members of Congress themselves are growing weary of having to cope with an everincreasing volume of private immigration legislation. In devising reforms in our quota system. it should be recognized that a return to the wide open. unrestricted policy of preWorld War I is out of the question. American immigration policy cannot solve the problem of world overpopulation. When our Nation was young and underpopulated we could absorb an unlimited number of immigrants. This is not the case today. Our rate of economic growth lags behind the rate of growth of our population. Chronic unemployment would be aggravated by a return to the immigration policies of a less complicated age. But there are certain basic changes in the law that can and should be made. In these remarks I would like to discuss the principal ones that are contained in this omnibus bill. They fall into four broad categories: First. Revision of the national origins quota system. Second. Preference for parents of U.S. citizens. Third. Repeal of the expatriation provisions for naturalized citizens. Fourth. Provision for relief of world refugee and Communist escapee problems. There are other provisions of this bill but they are more technical and I will not take up the time of the House in discussing them. They will be included in a sectionbysection analysis I have prepared and which I will insert in the RECORD following these remarks.