Speaker. Members of the Congress. I appreciate the opportunity to express my views concerning the urgent need to reform and improve our national immigration laws. I come before you as an avowed advocate of the pending administration bill. which I have cosponsored by introducing H.R. 2776. The subject of immigration and the laws regulating immigration is very close to my heart. My parents came to this country as immigrants 85 years ago. Many of my friends and close associates and thousands of my constituents are immigrants or children of immigrants. So the hopes. problems. and frustrations of the people who have come to this country seeking a better life are all familiar to me. And the dreams of those who yearn to follow their family and neighbors to America are of special concern to me. My experience with these matters has left me firmly convinced that the existing system for determining whom we shall welcome to our shores is unjust and unworkable. When. 40 years ago. Congress adopted the national origins quota system. it was in effect declaring that immigrants from one country are preferred to immigrants from another. The clear implication is that the quality of a human being is dependent upon his place of birth. To my mind. no more obnoxious. racist idea has ever been incorporated into the statute books of the United States. The inevitable result is a system which practices the most vicious kind of discrimination. Out of an annual overall immigration quota of 156.700. The United Kingdom. Germany. and the Scandanavian countries are allotted nearly twothirds of the places. Greece. Italy. and Poland. on the other hand. account for less than onetenth of all quota immigrants. As a result. some countries have waiting lists of qualified applicants that will take years to process while others use only a small portion of their annual quota. Our present immigration policy has been designed with a view to exclude certain types or groups of people. No one can argue with the concept that Congress must regulate the flow of immigration so as to protect the Nations economy. health. and morals. We certainly do have a responsibility to set rigorous standards that will deny entry to persons who would not make desirable citizens. But. the qualities we seek have nothing to do with national origin.
Identified stereotypes
Immigrants from one country are preferred to immigrants from another. The clear implication is that the quality of a human being is dependent upon his place of birth.