Mr. Chairman. the United States. more than any other country In the world. Is a nation of immigrants. In the last 200 years. more than 40 million people have migrated to these shores. They have established. developed. and sustained this country. They have contributed to. in fact they have molded. every aspect of American life. Yet today we find countless thousands who look to this great melting pot as a land of freedom and opportunity being denied the opportunity of immigration solely because of where they happened to be born. The loss is not only theirs but ours as well. The national origins quota system of 1924 has served to grade citizens of other countries on the color of their skin and on their nationality. It has implied that men and women from some areas of the world are more desirable than others. It has arbitrarily denied us people with skills and talents that would benefit our way of life and our wellbeing. It has kept thousands of our citizens needlessly separated from their families. For all these and still other reasons. the national origins system has been inconsistent with our basic promise of equal opportunity. It has weakened us both at home and in the eyes of the world. Just what is the national origins quota system? It is a method of selecting immigrants that assigns an annual quota to all countries outside the Western Hemisphere in proportion to the persons of that nationality or descent making up our white population in 1920. It should be abundantly clear that using quotas made up from such a base would give a handful of nations a completely disproportionate number of immigrants and. in fact. this Is exactly what has happened. The countries of northwestern Europe are assigned nearly 82 percent of 157.000 immigrants permissible. leaving southeastern Europe with 16 percent and the rest of the world with only 2 percent of the total. Immigration lists in many countries having only small or minimum quotas are backed up from 5 to 90 years. This method of selection cannot possibly give us the best new American citizens. Too much emphasis is placed on a mans place of birth and race at the expense of his skills and qualifications.
Identified stereotypes
The speaker suggests that the national origins quota system grades citizens of other countries on the color of their skin and nationality, implying some are more desirable than others.