Speech #890136519

Fifth. 24 percent. or 40.800 numbers. to the brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens. Sixth. 10 percent. or 17.000 numbers. to qualified persons capable of performing permanent labor for which a shortage of employable and willing persons exists in the United States. Seventh. 6 percent. or 10.200 numbers. for refugees as defined in the bill. In any given year. onehalf of these numbers may be used to adjust the status of previously paroled refugees who can qualify as permanent resident aliens. The numbers stated in these preference categories are fixed for the professionals. the laborers. and the refugees. Any other preference category dealing with family relationships receives the unused quota numbers of the preference category before it. Finally. all numbers unused in all the preference categories flow in the end for the use of nonpreference or "new seed" immigrants. Mr. President. the foregoing is a general description of our immigration policy on July 1. 1968. On that date no nation will have a quota number assigned to itexcept for the equalizing limit of 20.000 per nationand no immigrant will be penalized by his birth or ancestry. Between now and then. we have adopted a simple and equitable phasingout system. For the 3 years beginning July 1. 1965. each nation will maintain its national origin quota. but the quota numbers unused by any nation will be placed in an immigration pool for redistribution to other nations the following year. We will start the pool out with the 55.600 numbers unused last year. During the 3 years certain parts of the new system will be in effect. no one nation can receive more than 20.000 numbers per year. The immigration pool will be available only to immigrants qualifying under the new preference system. The total number available to the world will be the new total of 170.000. Because refugees are included in our general immigration law for the first time. both the Senate and House committee intended that the 6 percent of our total immigration numbers. allocated to refugees. or 10.200. will be available for use from the pool during the phaseout years. Refugees were never under the national origin system and should not be now: thus the numbers available for this purpose will be present both before and after July 1. Mr. President. in addition to eliminating the national origins system. this bill makes other reforms in our immigration policy that support the principles of merit and of first come. first served. I am especially gratified that we are wiping out the AsiaPacific triangle. Established by the McCarranWalter Act of 1952. this geographic triangle is used to identify those nations of the East to which a specially discriminatory rule applies. Any person. regardless of his place of birth. whose ancestry can be traced to a nation or nations within the triangle is chargeable to the quota of that nation. or to a general triangle quota of 100. The elimination of this crude device means that finally. after almost 100 years. Asian peoples are no longer discriminated against in the immigration laws of our country. The plight of refugees has been of special concern to us since the end of World War II. Every outbreak of violence between nations leaves its toll in the homeless and dispossessed. Our concern for refugees was capped in 1960 by the passage of the fair share law. under which we agreed to accept up to 25 percent of persons displaced to other lands in a prior 6month period. if these persons fell under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This law was passed in keeping with World Refugee Year. By placing refugees under our general immigration law for the first time. the bill before us will do away with the main provisions of the fair share law. thus allowing the United States to make its own determination of who is or is not a refugee. As definfed in this bill. refugees are those persons displaced from Communistdominated countries or areas. or from any country in the defined area of the Middle East because of persecution. or fear of persecution. on account of race. religion. or political opinion. They must be currently settled in countries other than their homelands. The bill also will make quota numbers available to refugees displaced by natural calamities. as defined by the President. This provision is designed to assure the world that we will remain a haven for the displaced. It means that when situations arise. like the earthquakes in the Azores in 1963. and floods in southeastern Europe. we will be able to assure that the cases of greatest need can be processed at once. while special legislation is being considered. Another change brought about by this bill relates to the controls exercised by the Secretary of Labor to protect our economy from whatever harsh effects immigration could create. Under current law. aliens who enter to seek employment are excluded from the country only if the Secretary of Labor has determined that their presence would have an adverse effect on the employment or the wages and working conditions of American citizens. Under this procedure. the Secretary certifies that aliens falling under certain occupational or skill definitions should be excluded because they will threaten domestic employment. The new bill reverses this procedure. It places the burden of proving no adverse effect on the applying alien. The intending immigrant must receive a certificate from the Secretary of Labor that his presence will not affect U.S. employment. wages. or working conditions. Mr. President. this provision was included in this bill to further protect our labor force during periods of high unemployment.