Speech #890119611

Mr. Chairman. H.R. 2580 was completely rewritten by the Immigration and Nationalities Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. It truly Is a historic bill. It represents. in my opinion. the bipartisan industry. patience. yes. the skills of the members of the subcommittee. I think the House should know that during all of these deliberations the matter that was uppermost in all of our minds. and I am speaking of the subcommittee in its entirety. was the interests of the United States. We have concluded unanimously that the national origin strictures can be removed from the immigration law without doing violence to our Nations immigration policy. The series of tight. close checks upon all who would enter is retained in our immigration law. The proposed amendments include even more restrictive provisions to safeguard the American economy. the American worker. and to preserve generally the wellbeing of our society and our Nations security. Our immigration laws are the most complex upon the statute books. The very complexity of the law has led to much public confusion and misunderstanding about our immigration policy. In truth and fact these United States continue and have been in the past the biggest hearted of all the nations of the world in receiving of foreign immigrants. Over the years the ancestors of all of ussome 42 million human beingshave migrated to these shores. To the peoples of Europe chiefly. but to others as well. the United States has long been a haven of opportunity and refuge. The stream of immigrants who have passed through American gates are the Nations true wealth. And today. Americas true worth and strength rest upon the contributionsmorally. politically. socially. economicallyof people of many national backgrounds and races. This is the unquestioned genius of the American experience. I I In formulating this Nations immigration policy. the population of the United States. and the available means for sustaining and supporting it must be given first consideration. The best interest of our people must be deemed paramount to that of all others. The object of our already generous immigration policy is to preserve and maintain the United States as a bright land of liberty. promise. and opportunity. America cannot continue to be that kind of a nation if it becomes overpopulated. socially and economically deteriorated or subverted in its republican form of constitutional government. Our immigration policy. then. has been generous. Our immigration law is predicated upon the principle that all aliens are admissible into the United States unless there is some provision of the law which requires their exclusion. That is why our immigration laws are so complex. The underlying purpose of the law is to exclude the inadmissible. That is the underlying purpose of the bill now before you for your considerationto exclude from our shores the in-. admissible and to select for admission only those who can meet the high qualitative and quantitative standards. Now you may ask why do we need reform of our immigration laws? I happen to believe our national interest and the realities of our immigration practices since World War II require and justify a new immigration selection policy. In 1921 President Harding signed the first national origin quota act and this act followed .by the quota act of 1924 placed into effect a dual selection of immigrants through the application of such standards of admissibility as health. literacy. security. and finances. - The second control on our immigration policy today is restriction of quota immigration to a specified maximum per year based upon their nation of birth. The formula by which immigrants are presently admitted to the United States is embodied in the immigration and nationality act of 1952. the WalterMcCarran Act. and it works like this. The quota of immigrants admissible to the United States from a given country or a quota area in any one year is equal to onesixth of 1 percent of the number of Americans whose national origins was traceable to that country in the census of 1920. This formula is rooted in the variegated pattern of the American people themselves and not in the population of a particular country overseas from which the immigrants come. It was intended to be a rational and logical method of numerically restricting immigration in such a manner as to best preserve the sociological and cultural balance of our population. Yet I say to this committee. the last four American Presidents--President Johnson. President Kennedy.