Speech #890138273

I hope. Mr. President. that it has become quite obvious that the critics of our present immigration policy will find themselves stuck with this spurious label of discrimination which they have been hurling at the national origins quota law ever since its enactment. They shout "discrimination" and then over the years what have they done? They have offered plan after plan to break down the law: unified quota plans. family reunification quota plans. quota pooling plans. populationimmigration plans. and ad infinitum. But what has been the result? In all cases the substitutes contained quantitative variations in the selection of immigrants. but those who cried loudest did not advocate unrestricted immigration. This is the dilemma of those who cast these unfounded charges against a formula which is based soundly on the true proportions of the national origins groups in our population. They do not advocate establishment of numerically equal quotas for all countries. They offer a substitute without a sound formula with builtin mechanisms for the allocation of quota numbers by administrative discrimination. Mr. President. we hear the clamor of the immigration reformists that we must remove the national origin quotas because it offends other nations and damages our foreign relations. It has been stated officially that it would better our foreign relations if we followed a different immigration policy. Do these critics ever attempt to explain the national origins quotas from a position of strength? Do they ever attempt to tell the truth rather than malign this law of ours which many of them are constitutionally bound to uphold and support? No. that is not the way they proceed as Americans.