Speech #890119615

I say to the gentleman that he is eminently correct. I believe .this is the area of perhaps widest misunderstanding. of our immigration laws today. There are those in this country who feel that the national origins quota system has been the master of our immigration flow. Certainly since WorldWar II. as the gentleman stated in his question. this has not been true. As a matter of fact. we propose in the legislation which is suggested here today to call a spade a spade and to make our present immigration law more reflective of our actual immigration practice. Immediately previous to the gentlemans question I was about to suggest exactly what he has suggested. I had indicated the numbers that Japan. China. and the Philippines had under the quota system. and the numbers that had come in. I was going to ask how this had been accomplished. Very frankly. before the ink was dry on the Immigration Act of 1952. early in 1953. Congress recognized that while the displaced persons and refugee resettlement problems had not yet been solved by the Displaced Persons Acts of 1948 and 1950 the new law. which carried forward the national origins formula. left this country without any instrumentality with which to cope with its responsibility in this area. Therefore. we went ahead. and a new refugee admission law was enacted. As a matter of fact. the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 was proposed and quickly passed by .the Congress. It is interesting to note that under that act more than 220.000 refugees came into this country outside the quota system and without regard to the national origins system. I believe that is a further response to the question of the gentleman from New York.