Speech #890133077

I think it is rather inconsistent on our part. Mr. President. to permit an increase in immigrationwhich is sure to be the effect of a more lenient immigration statuteat a time when we are becoming more and more aware of the population problems we are faced with in the world and in this country. These problems are bound to increase in dimension in the years ahead. The continent with the highest birth rate in the world today is South America. Yet. under our present immigration laws. unlimited immigration is allowed to natives of. Central and South American countries. It is time we were looking to this aspect of our immigration policy with a view to applying restrictions rather than trying to rectify discriminations against Asian and African countries that exist in our quota system. As I said earlier. I intend to support the application of a limitation on immigration from Western Hemispheric countries. but any change in our present immigration laws should be largely -limited to just this aspect and should not encompass such a wholesale revision as that with which we are about to be faced. Sooner or later. it seems to me. we are going to have to recognize the realities of this situation and to admit to ourselves that our first responsibility in matters of immigration is to the people of the United States and not to the entire population of the world. If we think that we are going to be able to alleviate the problems of expanding population of other countries of the world by permitting increased immigration into this. country we have some more hard thinking to do on the subject. It would be completely unrealistic for us to attempt to do this when the current annual net increase in world population is 70 million people. or more than onethird of the present population of the United States. The plain fact is that the United States is not hurting for population or jobseekers.