Mr. President. it gives me great pleasure to voice today my support of the immigration bill. H.R. 2580. The central principle of this billthe repeal of the national origins systemwas first incorporated in a bill drafted in the Department of Justice while I was Attorney General. The bill distills the accumulated experience and wisdom of 40 yearsthe years since the institution of the discriminatory national origins system. That system was imposed during the postwar crisis in Europe. when many in the United States feared that a continuance of unlimited immigration would lead to the coming here of tens of millions of unlettered. povertystricken refugeesand of hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries. Those fears proved unfounded. And ever since 1924. we have regretted the excesses of that day.
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Immigrants would be unlettered, poverty-stricken refugees and revolutionaries.