Speech #890120576

Poland got 6.488. Spain got 250. and Portugal got Naturally. these countries with small quota numbers rebelled. They often inveighed against the immigration policy of the United States. They complained bitterly that they were discriminated against. As was indicated in the debate yesterday. we ourselves realized inherently that there was something wrong in this national origins theory. As conditions arose requiring changes. we chipped away here and we chiseled there and cut away in another direction from the theory of national origins. so that finally only one out of every three immigrants coming into the land came under the national origins theory. Forty years of testing have proven that the rigid pattern of discrimination has not only produced imbalances that have irritated many nations. but Congress itself. through a long series of enactments forced by the realities of a changing world saw fit to modify this unworkable formula so that today it remains on the books primarily as an expression of gratuitous condescension. In fact. the condemned formula applies now to only 33 percent of our total annual immigration and even with regard to that 33 percent it is splintered time and time again by legislative patchwork attempting to prop up a crumbling structure. Congress recognized well what it was doing when it adopted those oneshot acts. This committee is well -aware of how Congress shattered the national origins pattern. but for whatever the reason. we chose not to call a spade a spade. We never admitted the truth of what we were doing. Each act. I am about to enumerate. in a sense has been an act of redemptionthe slow retreat from the fears and failures of 1921 and. 1924 and an open recognition of the unworkability of this basic principle of our immigration fabric. As soon as the Nazis surrendered and the guns were silenced the free world awoke to face the overwhelming task of resettling over 1.5 million victims of Nazi and Communist terror. the liberated inmates of concentration camps and Hitlers slave laborers. the mass of humanity stamped "displaced persons." We offered hospitality and took a fair share of these victims. The 1924 act with the national origins principle had to be bypassed. We skirted around it and passed in the 81st Congress the first Displaced Persons Act in 1948 and permitted entrance of 200.000 displaced persons outside of the national origins quota limitation. These displaced persons involved a miscellany of nationals and races. We then passed a second Displaced Persons Act in the 81st Congress sponsored by myselfonce again we disregarded the national origins quota system. In 1953 a new refugee admission law was passed. known as the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. It brought refugees into our land outside the quota formula. Again national origins was disregarded. Since 1957 every Congress through the 87th has been called upon to pass and did pass laws further bending. chipping off. whittling away the national origins idea. In 1958. the Hungarian emergency caught the United States again unprepared to cope with the crying need for offering asylum to victims of Soviet terror. We opened our doors to these unfortunate ones fleeing Soviet violence and persecution. and accepted 40.000 refugees by special enactmentanother body blow to national origins. The Hungarian quota is only 865 annually. In 1958 we passed special laws. despite the nationalorigins pattern. to admit Portuguese victims of the earthquake In the Azores and many Hollanders expelled from Indonesia.