Speech #890148536

Mr. Speaker. with the Statue of Liberty holding high her torch nearby. President Johnson on October 3. 1965. signed the new Immigration Act. one of the most important acts of this Congress and the administration. When recommending this legislation earlier in the year. the President urged the Congress to return the United States to an Immigration policy which serves the national interest and continues our traditional ideals. He stated: No move could more effectively reaffirm our fundamental belief that a man is to be judged--and judged exclusively--on his worth as a human being. In responding favorably to the Presidents request Congress has enacted a law which abolishes the discriminatory national origins system of allocating immigrant Visas on the basis of an individuals place of birth and substitutes a sensible. fair. humane and nondiscriminatory system. available on a firstcome. firstserved basis. Under the new system meaning and significance is given to preferences in the issuance of immigrant visas to persons having close family relationships to citizens and lawfully resident aliens. Under the system as it existed prior to the enactment of the administrations legislation the preferences accorded to close family members of citizens or lawfully resident aliens were largely ineffective because such preferences operated only within each separate quota area and thus meant little if anything to immigrants from lowquota countries. Under the new law all countries are afforded their fair share of the quota. The needless and prolonged separation of family members is thus avoided. particularly with respect to relatives who do not qualify for exemption from numerical quota limitations. It was possible under the old system for an American citizen to bring to this country without appreciable delay a total stranger. from a highquota country. for employment as a domestic. while at the same time the operations of the system could require years of waiting before he could bring in an aging parent who was a native of a lowquota country. Under the new law parents of citizens will not be subject to any numerical quota limitation. The new immigration law also will serve to prevent the separation of families occasioned by the absolute prohibition in the old law with respect to the admission of aliens who are mentally retarded or who had a past history of mental illness. The old law did not take into account the medical advances which have been made in the treatment of mental. illnesses. As a result there were many cases where close relatives of citizens or lawfully resident aliens were prevented from joining their families in this country even though they had been cured of their illnesses or such illnesses were medically controllable. The new law changed this heartless. cruel policy. One especially worthwhile reform in the new law is the repeal of the socalled AsiaPacific triangle provision. This provision defined a geographical area in the Far East which Included practically the entire continent of Asia. and any immigrant with as much as onehalf of his ancestry from this area was treated differently. All other immigrants were charged to the quotas of the countries where they were born. but a man born in England who lived in England all his life and never had left England would be counted as Asiatic if two of his four grandparents had come from Asia. The great majority of Asian countries had the minimum annual quota of 100. because they had relatively few inhabitants in the United States in 1920 who traced their origin to that part of the world. These token quotas had long waiting lists. and as a result the Englishmen would be kept out for many years because of his grandparents. while other Englishmen entered freely. The hardships which ensued are also illustrated by the following example: A family consisted of a white father born in Argentina. his wife who was half Japanese. and their infant child. all born in Argentina. Although the father and the child were entitled to enter as natives of an independent Western Hemisphere country. the wife had to be charged to the oversubscribed quota for Japan. This would normally prevent the family from emigrating. but in some cases it caused a separation of the family. This type of discrimination is now ended. and the whole family will be treated as Argentinians. The elimination of the discriminatory treatment of the AsiaPacific triangle is but one of the more dramatic accomplishments of the new act. It will serve in many ways to fill urgent needs in terms of simple humanity. in terms of our selfinterest at home. and in terms of our selfinterest abroad. For two decades we have operated our immigration laws under the warped standards of the national origins quota system. The time had long since passed for their replacement. The new standards which the Congress and the President have fashioned for the Nation are fair and carry out our ideals of fairness and democracy.