Speech #890153388

I have been privileged to serve in the House of Representatives since 1949. and this year. more so than in any previous year since my coming to Congress. I can truthfully say there is good reason to celebrate Columbus Day. For this year Congress at last has sent to the scrap heap an immigration program based on national origin quotas. In its place we have substituted a new law that reasserts Americas democratic heritage and spirit of fair play. No longer does our immigration policy attempt to perpetuate the fiction that the accident of birth in one country makes a man more or less acceptable for admission to this land of the free. Christopher Columbus. it should be remembered. was the Father of Immigration. The towering achievement of the onetime weaver from Genoa did not end with discovery and exploration. On his subsequent voyages.