Speech #900235388

Mr. Speaker. on October 3. 1965. a new Immigration and Nationality Act was signed into law. and it became effective on December 1. 1965. The 1965 act represented a major advance over the old. discriminatory. national origin quota system. Instead of asking where a person was born. the 1965 act set up a system of preferences. which asked. in effect. could he perform needed skills. or was he separated from family lawfully residing in the United States. While the Congress was well aware that the new law would remove the artificially high quotas from a few privileged Western European nations. Congress also knew that these nations had never used their full quotas. and was reassured by State Department estimates that the provisions of the new act would not cause the actual level of immigration from the formerly privileged nations to fall precipitously. In the case of Ireland. for example. the State Department estimated that Irish immigration would level off at about 5.200 persons per year. or slightly less than the pre1965 annual average. but. as a matter of fact. although the predictions for other countries have largely been borne out. Irish immigration has already declined to 1.809 visas issued in Dublin in calendar year 1967. and it is expected to decline even further. probably to a level as low as 500 per year. when the act is fully in effect in just 2 months. after July 1. 1968. As provided by the 1965 act. countries are still allotted their old quotas until July 1. 1968. if prospective immigrants can meet the other requirements of the 1965 act. One such requirement. the labor certification requirement. has resulted in a severe decline in Irish immigration during the transition period. even though Irelands quota is otherwise still In effect. After July 1. 1968. when the small number of Irish who can meet the labor certificate requirement must compete with prospective immigrants from other countries for the 17.000 sixth preference places. Irish immigration will drop even further. We may ask why other nationalities have not suffered similar declines. The main reason can be found in the sociological characteristics of immigration patterns. The 1965 act allotted 74 percent of the immigration places to relatives of American citizens and resident aliens. This gave an enormous boost to countries where the pattern involves the immigration of entire families. For example. Italy. which formerly had a distressingly low immigration quota of about 5.000. which was always oversubscribed. can now send 20.000 immigrants annually. the legal maximum for any single country. because it is customary for whole families to immigrate. The same is true for Portugal. Greece. Taiwan. and the Philippines. In the case of other countries. the gain resulting from the new allotment of preferences generally balanced the loss of the former quota. but in Irelands case. as with a handful of other northern and western European nations. it is not customary for whole families to immigrate. Rather. it has been traditional for an unmarried son to come to the United States. "work his way up." marry. and begin a family of his own. The 1965 act. without specifying explicit national quotas. has provided implicit ones by unintentionally favoring nations whose immigration conforms to certain sociological patterns. It has done this at the expense of other nations. The hardest hit country is Ireland. where the demand for immigration places is not numerically great. In former years. when the quota of 17.756 permitted essentially immigration opportunities for all who wanted to come. only about 7.000 Irish immigrated each year. or less than 5 percent of the worldwide total. How ironic that Ireland. whose sons have contributed so much to America. and whose level of immigration was historically low. should now suffer such discrimination. Mr. Speaker. much of the credit for bringing the problem of reduced Irish immigration to the attention of the Congress belongs to the American Irish Immigration Committee. its chairman. John Collins. and the Reverend Donald M. OCallaghan.