Speech #890034116

Amerloans of southern and eastern European extraction are told that more of their kind are neither wanted nor needed. Their contributions to this countrys development and their just claims to equal treatment under the law are ignored. It seems strange to me that at a time when the Congress is taking vigorous action to insure that no American will be denied their full privilege of citizenship because of race. we still maintain an immigration -policy which relegates millions of other Americans to secondclass citizenship because of national origin. The paradox is heightened by the almost universally agreed upon fact that the national origin quota system has not worked in practice. Aside from being unjust and discriminatory. It falls to come to grips with the realities of the modern world. Time and again. Congress has been forced to compensate for the inadequacies of the present system by passing special immigration laws. In recent years. over 60.000 quota spots have been going unused annually. At the same time. Increasing numbers of special nonquota immigrants have been admitted so that our total annual immigration is running nearly twice what the quota system is supposed to allow. Of this total only about a third has actually been controlled by the quota system. All of which clearly demonstrates the urgent need for a thorough overhaul of the whole system. There are a variety of other ways in which the present immigration system works to the detriment of our national interest. While serving as director of the Illinois Department of Labor. I had firsthand experience in dealing with problems of labor shortages and manpower recruitment. and I can emphatically state that our present immigration policies aggravate these problems. A recent editorial in the Chicago SunTimes pointed out that in the Chicago area alone there are critical labor shortages of hand tailors. furniture refinishers. and cabinetmakers. Elsewhere in the country. there are insufficient numbers of diemakers. glassblowers. machinists. chemists. teachers. medical personnel. and many other important occupational categories.