Speech #920194570

I am a member of the subcommittee. and I rise in opposition to the Dennis amendment. Mr. DENNIS argument reminded me a little bit of a saying of Plato: "One way to raise your standard of living Is to reduce your consumption." The way to solve the problem. if there is a problem of backlog of Italian immigrants. is not just to arbitrarily redefine the definition that would otherwise admit them to this country. Unfortunately for his argument. that is not what his amendment does. As the gentleman from New York so ably pointed out. and as Mr. DENNIS himself said. his amendment would not affect the people who should come in under the fifth preference under this bill. which is purely temporary legislation. but instead is aimed at making a permanent piecemeal revision of our immigration laws. one segment of the preference system. You cannot. however. do an intelligent job of revising the preference system unless you look at the whole system. So I think he effectively has argued against his own amendment. I would like to address myself to a point that was raised by the gentleman from Minnesota . Despite the fact that the State Department has opposed this legislation on the basis that it was a return to the national origin system. just merely saying it does not make it so. The fact is that at the time the 1965 act was passed. there was a backlog of 115.000 applications from Italy resulting from the unfair and discriminatory restrictions of the national origins system. At that time it was pointed out that unless arrangements were made for cleaning up that backlog. there would be some great inequities done by virtue of this discrimination resulting from the old system. The arrangements were not made at the time that act was passed to clean up the backlog. What we are trying to do now is belatedly correct a failure in the 1965 act. It is not by any conceivable argument a return to the national origins system. It is temporary in nature. it lasts only 4 years. and it is merely an effort to correct these past inequities.