Speech #890120769

Mr. Chairman. I am proud to rise in support of H.R. 2580. a bill which will accomplish some longawaited and extremely desirable changes in our existing immigration laws. Embodied in this bill is a realization and a recognition which has become widespread in this Nation rather belatedly. Indeed. even now it is not yet accepted in all quarters. I am speaking of the recognition of the basic equality of all men. In this immigration bill. we express the same belief expressed in the recent Voting Rights Act of 1965. passed overwhelmingly by this House. and in the Civil Rights Act of last year. That is the belief that men are to be judged on their own merit. as individualsand not on the basis of their racial ancestry. their skin color. their religion. or their place of national origin. Our present immigration law. as it now stands embodied in the Immigration and Nationality Act. as amended. is a repudiation of everything we Americans supposedly believe about the dignity and equality of man. Written into our law as the socalled national origins quota system is a device which is blatantly designed to allow entry into this country only to certain favored racial and national groups. Under existing law. we are supposedly trying to maintain the racial and national composition of the United States substantially as it was in 1920. Of course. the attraction of that year to some people is that the racial and ethnic majority in the United States was then white and AngloSaxon. For no good reason. our law has been trying to preserve that racial balance ever since. As the law now stands. 70 percent of the total authorized annual immigration of approximately 156.000 is allocated to 3 countries: Great Britain. Ireland. and Germany. and only 30 percent is available for over 100 other countries and areas. Secretary of State Dean Rusk has commented in testimony before a Judiciary subcommittee that it is very difficult to explain to our allies and our critics abroad. particularly the nations of Africa and Asia. why on one hand we claim it is our national policy to accord equality to all races and nationalities. and on the other hand we continue to foster a clearly discriminatory immigration statute. Well. Mr. Chairman. it is always difficult to explain away hypocrisy. and it is hypocrisy to permit the. nationalorigins quota system to remain on the books along with our recently passed civil rights legislation. The inadequacy of the rigid and unwieldy quota system is amply demonstrated by the way immigration into this country has been handled in the past 10 years. We in Congress are quite familiar with the thousands of private immigration bills introduced each session for the benefit of those who deserve to enter the United States. many of whom are political refugees. but are prevented from so doing by an unfair and arbitrary national quota. We in Congress are put in the position of having to circumvent our own legislation in order to be equitable. It is high time for a change. I would remind this House. however. that. for some. the elimination of the nationalorigins quota system will come too late. They are dead. thousands upon thousands of them. buried in mass graves at Auschwitz. Dachau. and BergenBelsen.