TO AMEND THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 1964 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m. in room 346, Cannon Building, Hon. Michael A. Feighan (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Feighan, Chelf, Rodino, Jr., Poff, and Moore. Staff members present: Walter M. Besterman, legislative assistant; Garner J. Cline, associate counsel; and Donald Benn, assistant counsel. Mr. FEIGHAN. The committee will come to order. I will insert in the record at this point the public statement, which I made on behalf of the subcommittee, announcing the opening of hearings and the general order to be followed in hearing witnesses. (The statement follows:) Mr. FEIGHAN. Mr. Speaker, I take pleasure in announcing that hearings on pending immigration legislation will begin on Thurday, June 11, at 10 a.m. Before hearing witnesses from the executive agencies and the general public, the subcommittee will schedule Members who have introduced proposed legislation on this subject and who wish to be heard. Opportunity is open for all Members to be heard or to submit prepared statements for inclusion in the record of hearings. The executive agencies are being informed of this action and definite schedules are being arranged for the appearance of witnesses. Arrangements will be made for as many representatives of nongovernmental organizations with an interest in pending immigration legislation and the general public to appear before the subcommittee, as time permits. The first witness invited to appear at these hearings is the Honorable Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Mr. FEIGHAN. Interested Members of Congress have been notified individually, and arrangements for their appearances before this subcommittee are being completed. The response from Members wishing to testify has been very encouraging. We will try to complete this phase of our hearings as expeditiously as business on the floor of the House will permit. We look forward to hearing the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Labor, in that order. We will also hear testimony by the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, on pertinent provisions of the pending proposal. Opportunity will be provided representatives of the executive agencies at the operating level to appear before this subcommittee. The subcommittee will do its best to hear testimony from representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and the general public. All those desiring to be heard should address their requests in writing to me. I am aware of the possibility that a very large number of witnesses with an interest in the pending legislation may wish to appear and to be heard. We will do our best, within the limitations of time, to accommodate all who make a written request to appear. I regret to announce that our hearing day must be recessed at 11 a.m., due to pending business on the floor of the House, and the fact that the House is to be in session at that hour. This is particularly regrettable, because our first witness is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Congressman Emanuel Celler, whose testimony is very important, and I know that we will have many important questions on his bill and related matters. In the interest of continuity, we will resume these hearings at a time convenient to our colleague, Mr. Celler, and convenient to the call of the House. We are happy to welcome Congressman Celler, who will open these hearings. Mr. Celler. STATEMENT OF HON. EMANUEL CELLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Mr. CELLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and my other distinguished colleagues. I welcome, indeed, the opportunity to talk on our immigration policy generally, and the bill I have offered, H.R. 7700, specifically. As you know, that bill embodies a proposal submitted to the Congress in a special message by the late, lamented, and martyred President Kennedy, and it has been formally supported by President Johnson, so we can term it the "administration bill." The present law perpetuates the principle of national origin, an antiquated immigration system proven beyond peradventure of a doubt to be unworkable. It was devised way back in 1921, more than 40 years ago, in an atmosphere of fear bordering on hysteria, a direct result of the unsettled domestic and foreign conditions following World War I. H.R. 7700 erases it. One of the very first speeches that I ever made in Congress inveighed against the national origin theory which was embedded in the 1921 law and was further extended in the 1924 act. At no time was this formula actually workable, constituting, as it did, a gratuitous insult to many nations whose friendship we forfeited. The fundamental feature of my bill, H.R. 7700, is the elimination from our laws of the fallacious belief that the place of birth or the racial origin of a human being determines the quality or the level of a man's intellect, or his moral character or his suitability for assimilation into our Nation and our society. In searching for a brief and comprehensive description of the underlying principle of my bill I use these words: "We do not intend to ask any immigrant 'Where were you born?' we intend to ask him only 'Who are you and what can you do for the country in which you have chosen to live?" " To put it another way, as I have done sometimes, it is not so much to ask where you were born as to ask, "Was America born in you?" Since the enactment of the law which enunciated the contrived ideology of the national origins theory, the criticism has been both acute and unceasing. Historians, social philosophers, demographers have pointed again and again to the fallacious reasoning which led to the adoption of the national origin formula. Forty years of testing have proven that the rigid pattern of discrimination has not only produced imbalances, but that Congress itself, through a long series of enactments forced by the realities of a changing world saw fit to modify this unworkable formula so that today it remains on the books primarily as an expression of gratuitous condescension. In fact, the condemned formula applies now-and this is most significant, gentlemen-the condemned formula applies now only to 33 percent of our total annual immigration, and even with regard to that 33 percent it is splintered time and time again by legislative patchwork attempting to prop up a crumbling structure. I am firmly convinced that this formula would have been changed years ago had a workable substitute been found. I am offering that workable formula now in the bill H.R. 7700. It is no secret to you, nor for that matter to anyone in Congress, that I have been highly vocal in decrying the national origin system of immigration selection. I have sponsored some and followed closely each successive act of Congress which fractured the untenable ratio of selectivity that allots annually some 65,000 quota_numbers to Great Britain, some 300 to Greece, and 250 to Spain. I pointed out the irony of the situation, the irony of the situation which is that Great Britain does not use all her quota. Many quota numbers go down the drain. Ireland gets 17,756 quota numbers, whereas Hungary is allotted 865, Portugal 434. Many Irish quota numbers remain unused. Incidentally, an average of 57,000 is the number of unused quotas each year from all countries. Congress recognized well what it was doing when it adopted these one-shot acts. This committee is well aware of how the Congress shattered the national origin pattern, but whatever the reason, we chose not to call a spade a spade. In other words, we never did admit to the truth of what we were doing. In a sense, each of the acts of Congress I am about to enumerate has been an act of redemption, the slow retreat from the fears and failures of 1921 and 1924, and an open recognition of the unworkability of the basic principle of our immigration law. As soon as Nazi Germany's surrender silenced the guns of World War II, the free world awoke to face the overwhelming task of resettling over 1.5 million victims of Nazi and Communist terror, the liberated inmates of concentration camps, and Hitler's slave laborers; in short, the mass of humanity stamped "Displaced Persons." The United States decided to offer hospitality to what was deemed to be her fair share of the unfortunates. However, the national origin formula of the 1924 law remained an unsurmountable obstacle to what the people of the United States wanted to do; namely, to accept the responsibility which the U.S. position of leadership in the world had imposed. Incidentally, in my experience over 40 years, over 40 years in Congress, at meetings, and even in the Congress, I hear people refer to their superior blood, saying that they come from a better land, where the blood is better. I say to those people, "If you think your blood is better than somebody elses blood, take your blood to the marketplace and see what it will buy you. In 1948, the 80th Congress passed the first Displaced Persons Act. Woefully inadequate as that law was, it permitted the entry of 200,000 displaced persons outside of the national origin quota limitation, but in spite of the objections of many, myself included, that law imposed an unfair "mortgage" of the immigration quotas. The 81st Congress passed the second Displaced Persons Act, sponsored by myself. Once again, the Congress recognized that the national origin quota system must be disregarded if this country were to respond to the public demand and discharge its moral and humanitarian obligations. As a compromise, the unfortunate "mortgage" feature of the 1948 law was retained. In 1957, however, under a bill sponsored in the Senate by the late lamented President Kennedy and in the House by my late friend and colleague of sainted memory, Mr. Walter, the mortgage provision was stricken from the statute books in obvious recognition of the fact that the situation created by the simultaneous operation of the national origin system plus the mortgage, had become untenable. Congress knew that the doors to the United States could no longer stay tightly shut for immigrants born in some 11 countries of Eastern Europe which suffered most under Hitler's and Stalin's rule, those very countries that had minimal quotas, and made deliberately small by the national origin theory. The ink was hardly dry on the basic act of 1952 when, early in 1953, the Congress recognized that while the displaced persons and refugees resettlement problems have not yet been solved, the new law, by carrying forward the national origins formula, left this country without any instrumentality to cope with its responsibilities and the emergent needs of the homeless. A new refugee admission law was proposed and quickly passed. It is known as the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. It brought to these shores over 220,000 refugees outside of the quota system, outside of the national origins formula and even without the pitiful expediency of the "mortgage" used in the 1948 and the 1950 enactments. Just as the two Displaced Persons Acts constituted the first loud and public admission of the obsolescence and the unworkability of the national origin formula of the 1924 law, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, enacted only 8 months after the 1952 act became effective, remains an equally convincing piece of evidence of the bankruptcy of the system so very unfortunately incorporated in the statute now in effect. Since 1957 every Congress, through the 87th, has been called upon to pass and did, indeed, pass a law further bending, chipping off and whittling away the national origin formula. Under pressure of inescapable facts, the 85th Congress passed the act of September 11, 1957, converting into nonquota status many thousands of immigrants in the first, second, and third preferences, the highly skilled aliens whose services were urgently needed in this country and the relatives of U.S. citizens and immigrants. Under the same law all unused numbers remaining from the Refugee Relief Act allocations were authorized to be used-again without regard to national origin of the applicants. The Hungarian emergency caught the United States again unpre-pared to cope with the crying and most urgent need for offering asylum to the victims of Soviet terror. A broad interpretation of the law was used and the doors were open but the Congress had to act fast to redress the situation and the same 85th Congress enacted on August 8, 1958, the law authored by the distinguished chairman of this subcommittee, Mr. Feighan, granting permanent residence to upward of 40,000 Hungarian refugees. The principle of national origins received another body blow. From 1957 on, this trend of congressional action in the field of immigration became obvious-and permanent. Every year, through 1962, brought new laws admitting outside of the national origin system highly skilled specialists, relatives of U.S. citizens and permanently residing aliens as well as refugees; always, however, on a piecemeal basis, never reaching the core of the problem. In 1958, the Congress passed four such laws, the acts of July 25, August 8, August 21, and September 2. The last one-Public Law 85-892-had an additional significance since it selected nationals of only two countries for relief, the Portuguese victims of the earthquake which took place on the Azores and the Dutch expelled from Indonesia-a truly convincing admission of the inadequacy of the national origins quota system, as the quota for the Netherlands is relatively large, while the Portuguese quota is very small-both equally inadequate to achieve congressional intent to help. The 86th Congress acted twice along the same lines. The act of September 22, 1959, granted nonquota status to relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who had already experienced a waiting period on the consular registers exceeding 10 to 15 years. The act of July 14, 1960, admitted more Portuguese and more Dutchmen as well as authorized the paroling of refugees with the built-in provision permitting the Attorney General to adjust their status to that of permanent residence after they had spent 2 years in the United States. National origin was again totally disregarded. The 87th Congress did not deviate from this now almost traditional course of action. Again, under the act of September 26, 1961, the reuniting of immigrant families was expedited by exempting large numbers of registrants from the national origin restrictions. Following that, under the act of October 24, 1962, the Congress enlarged on the categories of relatives permitted to enter on a nonquota basis and for the fourth time since 1957 has extricated first preference applicants, the skilled specialists, from the national origins straitjacket. Thus, my good friends, year after year the Congress continued to tear away bits and pieces of the national origins system until a situation was created where that system, as of fiscal year 1963, governs the admission of only 33 percent of our total immigration intake while the onus of it remains nailed down to our entire immigration code. In 1963, for example, there was a total immigration admission of 306,260. Of this total, 103,000 were quota immigrants, 203,000 were nonquota immigrants. In 1962, a similar situation. There were 283,000 total immigration entries in the country; quota immigrants, 90,000, nonquota immigrants, 193,000. In view of this history, can we really, honestly say that we are now faced with a radical proposal? Are we really suddenly and dra |