Speech #890038186

DooleyI must raise my clarion voice agin the invasion of this fair land by the paupers and anarchists of effete Europe. Ye bet I mustbecause Im here first. I raise the issue again with some trepidation. for it is a popular but erroneous belief that reform of the immigration laws would throw open the United States to a flood of slave traders. hashish chewers. coolies. witch doctors. mountain bandits. and camel drivers. This xenophobic concept envisions the typical immigrant as an illiterate. choleraridden pagan. who would either usurp the job of an American workingman or go on the relief rolls. who would subsist on fish heads and rice. father 13 children. and refuse to learn to speak English. who would lower property values wherever he lived. who would vote against school bond Issues. hoard his money in tin cans and. who. in his idle hours. would run numbers. smoke opium. and revive the Tong wars. This somewhat fanciful description has no basis in fact. Neither I nor anyone else seriously suggests that we permit unlimited immigration. We cannot return to the opendoor policies of a happier and less complex age. To promise entry to all who wish to come here would create insurmountable problems for the United States and would do little to solve the problems of the countries from which the immigrants came. Our friends abroad certainly understand our position. Our immigration policy must conform with our capacity to absorb. I do not question that commonsense approach. I do. however. strongly object to the unconscionable practice of restricting immigration by placing quotas on individual nations. The national origins system reflects a sad and unnecessary conflict with our national ideals. As long as the quota system is based on national origins it will be a source of pain and of shame. It can and should be correctednot only because it is parochial. degrading. and inequitous. but because. as I hope to show. it is the atavistic symbol of an attitude this country has outgrown. I have Introduced a bill. H.R. 93. which I believe represents a reasonable. fair. and comprehensive revision of our immigration laws. Its primary aim is not to increase the present level of immigration. Rather. it Is designed to bring about the elimination of the national origin quota system and aline other of our policies with this Nations principle of human equality. The bill would give the law a flexibility and honesty it now lacks and which causes a great deal of humiliation and suffering. Before discussing the merits of the bill. I would like to talk briefly about the history of our immigration laws and the compelling reasons for change: The young United States had a very liberal immigration policy. We proclaimed the principle that a religious test would not be required for public officeholders. we held every public office in the countrywith the exception of the Presidency itselfopen to naturalized citizens. Both policies were established primarily to stimulate immigration. Most laws enacted since that time have either set or retained limitations on immigration. The first were the Oriental Exclusion Acts originally passed in 1882. which placed a flat ban on the Chinese and Japanese. In 1917. over President Wilsons veto. the Congress created the Asiatic Barred Zone. which was the forerunner of the national origins system. It excluded persons from India. Burma. Siam. and other countries located in what came to be called the AsiaPacific triangle. With these exceptions. our immigration laws were qualitative. that is. they excluded only those persons who failed to pass certain minimal tests of health. literacy and good conduct. The quota law of 1921 and the JohnsonReed Immigration Act of 1924 changed all that. The JohnsonReed Act limited the total number of immigrants who could enter the United States in any one year to 150.000. The act also provided that the annual quota for any nationality should bear the same ratio to 150.000 as the number of persons of that nationality in this country bore to the total population of the United States. The most recent census. in 1920. was taken as the base for determining nationality population ratios. "Descendants of slaves"-in other words. virtually the entire Negro population of the United Stateswere not counted in computing the ratios. The purpose of the act was to freeze the then existing national structure of the American population. Its innate bias against southern and eastern Europeans and nonwhites from Asia and Africa. as expressed in the national origins quota system. has not been substantially altered. JohnsonReed remains to this day our basic immigration statute. The year following passage of the act. total immigration to the United States fell from 706.896 to 294.314. Although immigrations continued at about that level until the depression. it Is only within the last 15 years that the figure has consistently exceeded 200.000. For the last 10 years. it has averaged about 280.000. The most important single revision of our immigration laws was the Immigration and Nationality Act. commonly known as the McCarranWalter Act. which was enacted over President Trumans veto in 1952. The act attempted to codify the plethora of laws. amendments. regulations. proclamations. executive orders. rules. operational instructions. classifications. dispensations. and circumventions that had grown up around the JohnsonReed Act over the years. Indeed. the act made a number of worthwhile changes: It eliminated discrimination between the sexes and gave preferentional status to skilled aliens. It repealed the Oriental Exclusion Acts by setting token quotas for nations in the AsiaPacific triangle. It gave Asian spouses and children of American citizens nonquota status. It eliminated race as a bar to naturalization. But it did not abrogate the humiliating and inflammatory racial philosophy by which we overtly discriminate against more than onehalf of the worlds population. the national origins quota system emerged intact. Let us look at the record. for a moment. to see what the quota system does in practice. According to the annual report of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. which was released a few weeks ago. 292.278 aliens were admitted to the United States as immigrants or permanent residents during the 1964 fiscal year. Of these. only 102.877 came from quota countries. Of the other immigrants. more than 140.000 came from Canada. Mexico. and other independent nations of the western hemisphere. none of which has ever been subject to quotas. Wives. husbands. and children of U.S. citizens accounted for about 33.500 nonquota admissions. Thus we see immediately that immigration from quota countries represents only slightly more than onethird of the permanent admissions to the United States. Even if the full quota for all countries--currently 158.161was utilized. immigration from quota countries would only make up a little more than half our annual inflow. Of the worldwide quota of 158.161. Europe receives 149.597 quota numbers.