Speech #890138275

Mr. President. I am opposed to the pending immigration billthe people of Arkansas are opposed to itand. according to a recent national pollthe American people are opposed to it. After several years of intensive study. the Congress enacted less than 15 years ago. the WalterMcCarran Act. which sought to define and express this Nations immigration policy. That act was an attempt to blend national interest with the traditional American concept of the brotherhood of man. It was a reasonable act in that it attempted to build our immigraion policy on the premise that we should admit to our shores those aliens who stood the best chance of becoming Americanized. The Act was based on the national origins system which has become a symbol it seems of dread and discrimination if we are to heed the emotional cries of those who seek to change and liberalize that act by the emasculating language of the pending bill. National origins means. quite simply. that system devised by this country following World War I whereby preferential immigration status was accorded to those countries which contributed the most to the formation of our country. In effect. the system sought to reflect the makeup of our people by allowing immigration on a fractional basis of Americas population. This is today baldly labeled as a discriminatory system and it is said that it has to go. I would ask. discriminatory to whom? And I would also ask. since when has it become discriminatory to found immigration on a reasonable and rational system designed to accomplish the desired end of immigration? The decade of the 1960s promises to go down in this countrys history as the decade of discrimination. The erroneous connotation of the word "discrimination" has become so evil that I doubt that there is an American alive today who would want to be described as having discriminating taste whether in food or clothing.