Speech #1010175729

Earlier this year we celebrated the end of this McCarthyera relic. And now we have been embarrassed yet again. In yesterdays Washington Post we learned that the immigration authorities held up a visa for a Canadian labor leader because he was on the lookout list for subversives. Why? Because in his youth. he had a passingand decidedly nonideologicalassociation with a subversive youth organization: he wrote a sports column for the newspaper of the National Federation of Labor Youth League. a Junior wing of the Communist Party. and played left field on their baseball team. More. I have received from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights a redacted copy of the alien lookout list. Those who are inclined to think that the names on the list were placed there long ago and that the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service are no longer acting as thought police would do well to read the introduction to the list. written by Arthur Helton of the Lawyers Committee. He notes that of the 353.324 people on the list whose opinions rare deemed to be unacceptably dangerous. an astounding 238.140 names have been added since 19801 Over twothirds of the total list. The State Department has added 4.390 persons to the list in the first 3 months of 1990. Despite the clear congressional intention to end these absurd practices once and for all. the administration takes the insupportable position that it has the right to continue to ask aliens about their ideological beliefs. to maintain the lookout list and to delay visas pending the granting of a waiver. The administration agrees that the waiver is now mandatory. but still insists on its right to make suspect aliens obtain the mandatory waiver. This has not passed without notice.