Speech #960256769

Speaker. I insert my Washington report for Wednesday. June 18. 1980. into the Our recent experience with refugeesthe Vietnamese in 1975 and the Cubans in the last several weeksclearly shows the inadequacy of the laws under which we grant people entry into the United States. The central fact of our experience is that we have lost a large measure of control over who can and who cannot come into this country. Immigration policy has always been a difficult matter for Americans. We have restricted immigration for more than 100 years. Quotas have regulated the flow of immigrants. according to their national origin. since 1921. Much immigration. however. is now occurring ad hoc. For the past quarter century the United States Attorney General has had discretionary parole power under which he has permitted into the country more than one million refugees from Hungary. Cuba. the Soviet Union. and other lands. Although our laws will allow about 630.000 refugees and immigrants. into the country this year. many more will come in legally outside the ceiling. Moreover. the law gives the President the authority to let in an unlimited number of refugees. In addition. thousands more will cross our borders as illegal aliens. In the last half of the 19th Century and the first half of this one. we brought people in under laws that were not always wise or fair. but at least the immigration occurred within the law. Today. the laws of the United States are being evaded. We have neither an effective emergency policy to deal with new waves of refugees nor a coherent national policy on immigration. When faced with a problemthe rapid influx of Cubans or the steady northward migration of people from the other nations of Latin Americawe seem to flounder about. not knowing what we are doing or why we are doing it. The basic difficulty is that we have not determined for ourselves what our objectives are and how we can best achieve them. We have regarded immigration matters as marginal in importance and susceptible to expedient solutions. We have set up a limit and then. through the use of the parole power or the "back door." have let in thousands more on their own initiative. Our immigration policy must be geared to new realities. The worlds population is now 4.4 billion. and it is expanding at a rate of 172 per minute. about 90 million per year. With political turmoil in many parts of the world. the number of refugees has swelled to 14 million. America is still the "promised land" for most of them. and they would flock to our shores if they could. We may be preoccupied with our own domestic troubles. but our nation is the shining hope of these homeless men and women. many of whom have felt the scourges of war. political oppression. and abject poverty.