Speech #890138271

Mr. President. we again are witnessing the assault on our immigration laws by those individuals and groups who feel that they can obtain political mileage by this form of appeal to the organized minority blocs in the great urban areas of this country. I have witnessed these efforts for many sessions of the Congress. and this 1st session of the 89th Congress is proving to be no exception. In fact. Mr. President. the efforts in this Congress to curry the favor of the minority blocs of votes by destroying our present national origins quota system through bipartisan political efforts exceeds all efforts in the past. It is an assault which is dangerous and which could have. in fact. most serious consequences on our present form of government if not met with determined resistance. I have opposed these efforts to destroy the McCarranWalter Act in the past and I shall oppose them now. Mr. President. it has been my privilege to be a member of the Committee on the Judiciary of this body since February 7. 1944. which was in the 2d session of the 78th Congress. I have had a keen interest in matters relating to our immigration and naturalization system since jurisdiction over such matters was transferred to the Committee on the Judiciary pursuant to the terms of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. As a matter of fact. my interest in these matters antedates the transfer of jurisdiction over them to the Judiciary Committee. for I had the privilege of serving on the Immigration Committee prior to the reorganization of the committees in the Senate. As a member of a special subcommittee which made a complete study of our immigration and naturalization systems. I became intimately acquainted with many and varied groups that are interested in immigration matters and the subtle ways in which pressures are exerted in hopes of obtaining special privileges and preferred treatment. That subcommittee made the recommendations to the Congress which ultimately were incorporated into the Immigration and Nationality Act. Since 1956. I have been chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization Subcommittee. and not only have I observed. but I have had to resist continually. these relentless yearly efforts to scrap our immigration laws or pass special enactments for special groups of aliens in order to gain what is thought to be a political advantage. The fact that such precipitate action might undermine our sound system of immigration laws is lost sight of in the hot pursuit of minority bloc votes. Over the course of the past several years. there have been a number of special enactments to take care of certain harship situations which arose in the administration of the immigration laws. For example. there was a special enactment to offer relief to certain distressed aliens in the Azores and certain Indonesian refugees in the Netherlands. There were several enactments to facilitate the reunion of families by providing special visas for certain relatives of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. In addition. relief through special enactments was granted to a large number of Hungarian refugees and many other refugees from Communist oppression. In all these cases the result was that more immigrants were permitted to enter the United States. Mr. President. you would think that after such acts of generosity on the part of this Nation perhaps the pressure would be relaxed. but that is never the case.