Mr. Chairman. I have consistently advocated reform of our immigration law. Our present immigrant law was passed in 1952 over a veto by President Harry S. Truman. It is in essence a continuation of the national origins quota system which was enacted into law during that dark period after World War I when religious and racial hatred was at its zenith. This was a time when the idealism of Woodrow Wilson was thrust aside In favor of the reactionary nativism of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. It was a time when the Ku Klux Klan marched by the thousands down Pennsylvania Avenue and when a resolution to condemn the Klan was voted down at the Democratic convention held in Madison Square Garden. We have come a long way since the 1920s and yet one of the last vestiges of the racial and religious hatred of that day still remains on the statute books. The very basic contention that "all men are created equal" is negated by our immigration policy. A policy which files in the face of our national ideals by holding that some races and some ethnic groups make better Americans than others. We have frozen into law a concept that should have been buried with Adolf Hitler In the bunker in Berlin.
Identified stereotypes
The speaker implies that the national origins quota system suggests some races and ethnic groups make better Americans than others.