Speech #890151607

Mr. Speaker. the immigration reform bill the President signed into law at the base of the Statue of Liberty is a historic piece of legislation welding this Nation to its historic ideals of equality and justice. The action of the Congress and the President in bringing this measure into force is significant for reasons both symbolic and practical. We are moving to strike away harmful racial and ethnic boundaries in our society. The new law is a step toward that goal. for it replaces a law that for two decades has violated the principles on which America was founded and grew strong. The 40yearold national origins system we have replaced had little support either in logic or in principle. and it demeaned our Nation. In allocating quotas according to the supposed national origins of the American population of 1920. it favored immigrants from the countries of northern Europe and discriminated against those from everywhere else. The quota for Ireland. for example. was larger than that for all of Asia. The quota for Switzerland was larger than for all the nations of Africa. Because of discrepancies such as this. quotas assigned northern European countries often remained unfilled. while other countries had long waiting lists. The implications of the national origins quota system remained undisguisedit openly suggested that one kind of ancestry is better than another. that a person from England is nine times more acceptable than one from Poland or 12 times more acceptable than one from Italy. This is an implication which was rejected by four American Presidents before Lyndon B. Johnsonfrom President Woodrow Wilson who vetoed the first bill to John Kennedy. It is an implication which America has finally put to rest. In so doing we have asserted anew our confidence in the strength of our traditions of equalitytraditions that are inseparable from the very origins of our country. Indeed. not only did the Declaration of Independence affirm that "all men are created equal." some of the very grievances that caused it to be written were the restrictions imposed on immigration to the Colonies by the British Crown. From the very beginning America was thrown open to all equally. Thomas Jefferson spoke for his countrymen when he asked "Shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land?