Speech #890002494

The Presidents proposal is reactionary in the true meaning of that word. which means merely a return to a former policy or tradition. His proposal reincarnates what was long the fundamental American idea. ideal. and practice. Violation of this tradition by the national origins quota system does incalculable harmThe President wrote. pointing out that by it is implied that immigrants from some countries are less desirable than those from others. The fact is that the pioneering quality which caused men and women to leave their ancestral lands in the Old World with their minds and hearts fixed in hope on this land of liberty and equality. coupled with the opportunities afforded by our freedom. created. as that perspicacious French observer. Alexis de Tocqueville. shrewdly concluded. a new race of peoplethe Americans. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once remarked to the Daughters of the American Revolution. who needed that reminder: Remember always that all of us. you and I especially. are descended from immigrants. And the miracle of America is that in one generation a refugee from oppression. from poverty. from lack of opportunity for advancement and selfbetterment. has achieved either for himself or for his offspring a soaring from these depths to pinnacles of happiness and achievement. Such examples abound in our midst. In his moving preamble to his keynote address at the Democratic Convention last August. Senator JOHN PASTORE. son of immigrant parents from Italy. said: This is not in my script. but. indeed. it is in my heart. I would be a strange person. Indeed. if I did not acknowledge this marvelous and wondrous manifestation of good will. This is something that could happen in America alone. I am a first generation native American of immigrant parents who came to this great land at the tufn of the century. My State has already hon6red me with the two highest positions in the gift of our people to bestow upon any citizen. namely. the governorship of the State and now membership in the U.S. Senate for 14 years. A close parallel may be found in the record of another of our colleagues. ED MUSKIE. His father. too. was an immigrantfrom Poland. His son. like JOHN PASTORE. a firstgeneration Americanborn. likewise was honored by his StateMainewith election to the governorship and then to the Senate. I was with ED MUSKIE on a visit to Russia for the Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs and on Public Works to study its hydro programs when he left our party to visit his fathers native village in Poland.