Speech #900221867

Mr. Speaker. on April 3 the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee will begin hearings to review operations under the Immigration Act amendments put into effect following the act of October 3. 1965. This act will long be remembered as the legislation which repealed the discriminatory national origins concept as a system of selecting immigrants to the United States. No longer will place of birth determine a mans qualifications for admission to the United States. In this day and age such type of selection is both repugnant to our sense of fairness and detrimental to our foreign policy principles. I have long advocated removal of the arbitrary and unjust national origins quota system. so the 1965 act. which accomplished this objective and in addition gave priority to the reunification of families and the admission of immigrants with needed skills. had my wholehearted support. Unfortunately. developments since its enactment indicate that it has resulted in immigration trends contrary to our objectives and. in fact. has created a reverse type of discrimination. This has had a serious adverse impact on immigration from the traditional countries of emigration to the United States. such as Ireland. the United Kingdom. and Germany. Of deep concern to me. in particular. is the situation with regard to immigration from Ireland. which in the past has been one of the leading countries from which new U.S. citizens came. Mr. Speaker. during the first fiscal year of this decade. 7.687 immigrants from Ireland were admitted to the United States. By contrast. during the fiscal year ending June 1967. only 2.624 Irish immigrants were admitted to this country. The number of prospective immigrants is further diminutive. The vital role of Americans of Irish heritage in the building of America. and their contributions to the growth. progress. and happiness of our Nation. are vast and indisputable. It is exceedingly distressing to realize that the meritorious purposes of the 1965 act appear to have been negated in the case of immigration from Ireland. It is imperative that this problem be considered during our forthcoming hearings. We must ask what factors are involved. Is the economy in Ireland so favorable that people do not wish to emigrate? Are employment opportunities in countries closer to Ireland more inviting? Is the new U.S. immigration policy too restrictive? It may be that each of these issues contributes. in varying degrees. to the decline of Irish immigration. Nevertheless. a more incisive analysis will show that no matter how well meaning the recent amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act were. a reverse discrimination has crept into our immigration policy. The major objective of the act of October 3. 1965. was the repeal of the national origins quota system. To accomplish this worthy objective. however. those of us who steadfastly sought to remove all bias and discrimination from our immigration policy had to accept certain regulatory provisions. such as the labor certification. in order to secure passage in both bodies of the Congress. The Congress. with an enlightened attitude. was willing to remove the last vestiges of discrimination but determined to adopt new procedures to control immigration. The principal controlling feature became the labor certification provision. This provision. hindsight has sadly shown. has worked a hardship on many intending immigrants and has greatly contributed to the curtailment of our traditional immigration from Western Europe. During the consideration of this legislation there was evidence that a phaseout periodsuch as 3 yearswould permit the oversubscription of certain quotas to be eliminated and. at the same time. allow those countries who have enjoyed large quotas to anticipate July 1. 1968. when there would be competitive immigration on a worldwide basis. We now discover that the phaseout period did not accomplish its intended goal. This period became an open invitation for intending immigrants to seek registration priorities and did not offer sufficient time for -the countries of Western Europe to create registration priority lists. Unfortunately. the phaseout procedure. which set forth an immigration pool of unused visa numbers for reassignment to countries with oversubscribed quotas. must be viewed as selfdefeating. Consequently. many countries--such as Ireland. Germany. and the United Kingdomwill not. after July 1. 1968. when the full impact of the recent amendments becomes effective. be in a position to compete for immigrant visas on a worldwide basis. Conceivably. immigration in these countries may be cut to a mere trickle and under some preference categories become completely nonexistent. I am considering several proposals which I hope will solve the problems associated with Irish Immigration and immigration from the other countries of Western Europe. and I have asked the appropriate departments in the executive branch to comment on them. One possible approach I am considering is to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to guarantee that each country will receive a fair proportion of the worldwide available numbers under the 170.000 ceiling on immigration from other than the Western Hemisphere. The law now provides that no country can receive over 20.000 immigrant visas exclusive of immediate relatives in any one fiscal year. What the law does not provide for is a minimum number that any country will receive. I am also considering the feasibility of extending the phaseout period for an additional 2 years. but this time with builtin provisions to reasonably insure the elimination of backlogs. There is also evidence that many skilled persons whose services are urgently needed in the United States have been unable to receive visas because of the admission of aliens with spurious skills and others who have misrepresented their reasons for coming to this country. Thus. it is patently imperative that the labor certification procedures be carefully analyzed and constructively amended to insure that the best interest of the United States and fairness to the intending immigrant be reasonably brought into focus. I intend to offer amendatory legislation as soon as all ramifications of the labor certification can be studied. I know that many Members of the House concur with me that corrective legislative action must be taken quickly. before the July 1. 1968. era goes into effect. I intend to propose such measures to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Nationality during the course of our series of hearings which are scheduled to begin on April 3. My support of an equitable and realistic immigration policy has not and will not waver. and I intend to do all in my power to insure that the remaining elements in our immigration law that create inequity and distress will be removed. We. as legislators. are ever mindful of the fact that there are more persons in this world who desire to live in the United States than we can reasonably accept. Our immigration must be controlled. Yet we must insure that the system of control utilized is one which will recognize the dignity of each intending immigrant and which will give every prospective immigrant a fair opportunity to achieve his desire of living among us as an American citizen.