prudent in the end product, but to be prudent in responding to the pressure of time, which runs out on us eventually.

Mr. Chairman, in the last session, I had an opportunity of testifying before this subcommittee in support of the then administration bill which was very similar to the one now before us, S. 500. There is no need to repeat in full that earlier statement, as I am sure the committee will consider the earlier record as just the ultimate chapter in these continuing hearings.

Thank you.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Senator Hart. I know all of us in the Senate know the great interest that Senator Hart has manifested in this undertaking, and it has been his leadership in proposing this legislation which has provided the rest of us in this cause an opportunity to focus our efforts. We are certainly deeply indebted to his participation.

Senator Javits?

STATEMENT OF HON. JACOB K. JAVITS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, I make this statement only because I intend to introduce today with Senators Morse and Clark an immigration bill which I would hope very much we might consider also as being before the committee. So as the Attorney General is testifying, I felt it would be advisable to outline just exactly what the bill I shall introduce does.

It seeks also to eliminate the discriminatory national origins quota system and I support this principle which is contained in S. 500, the administration bill, wholeheartedly. Indeed, I am a cosponsor of S. 500 because I do support what it seeks to do.

I believe, however, and that is the essence of the new bill that we are putting in, that since the administration bill provides for the elimination of discrimination in the Asia-Pacific Triangle in the year following enactment, we should similarly abolish the national origins quota system just as decisively in the year following enactment and not phase it out over a 5-year period, thus protracting an already extremely unjust situation.

I notice, parenthetically, a number of references in the Attorney General's written testimony to this idea of 5 years as not desirable; yet we are carrying it over in the administration bill to a certain extent.

Other than that, the bill I am introducing will transfer all quota numbers to a reserve pool, to permit pooling of the unused quota numbers and their allocation to those on waiting lists on the basis of the existing statutory preference system, based primarily on skills and close relationships to U.S. citizens.

The preference system, Mr. Chairman, under the existing immigration laws determines only the priority of individual nationals in the same country. Under my bill, they would determine priority between nationals of different countries and would prevent unfair benefits to applicants of one country. No more than 10 percent of the total quota numbers could be issued to any area.

The other features of the bill are to establish a Board of Visa Appeals, which I think are very necessary, to the Department of State, and to establish a statute of limitations whereby no alien may be deported by reason of conduct occurring more than 10 years prior to the institution of the deportation proceeding; it would afford judicial review of citizenship requests and both exclusion and deportation orders rather than deportation orders only; to allow Cuban refugees to adjust their status to permanent residence without leaving the United States as is now required for aliens of countries contiguous to the United States or adjacent islands; and to afford nonquota status to parents of U.S. citizens.

This bill is in many ways like bills I offered in January 1961 and July 1963, and includes, of course, many of the recommendations of President Johnson's immigration message. I have already indicated my feeling on that by joining in that bill.

Now, I would like to make these general comments, Mr. Chairman. Under present laws, our national immigration policy opens our national doors wide for many people who do not care to come in, and slams them in the faces of people who would cherish the opportunity to be U.S. citizens. Like most spite walls, it is as harrassing to those within as those without. It is so offensive to fairminded Amercans, whom it is presumably designed to protect, that it has produced a flood of backdoor finagling and occasional circumvention by Congress itself. Each week scores of families stream into my office, and I have no doubt they come into the chairman's office and that of other Senators, seeking help in very difficult immigration situations and private immigration bills make up a major portion of our Federal legislation and of the bulk of the calendar of the Judiciary Committee. I was in the House when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, better known as the McCarran-Walter Act, which perpetuated this whole system, was enacted. I argued then what others have since argued, that since it was enacted, enough time has gone by that all of these dire forecasts should have come true. Time and experience have more than dramatized the fact that, as its opponents contended 11 years ago, it is perhaps as unique a law as we have on our statute books. But these 11 years have also produced an atmosphere of political helplessness to exasperate even the most determined immigration reformers, so that today most have resigned to the now annual practice of settling for piecemeal revisions or temporary relief, rather than an effective overhaul of our entire policy of immigration. The backdoor methods Congress has used to cover up deficiencies in the basic law is the greatest proof of the law's inadequacies. Since the McCarran-Walter Act was enacted, Congress has passed special, short-term immigration and refugee legislation which has had the cumulative effect of admitting into the United States more than twice as many persons as permitted under the basic McCarran-Walter Act. But even this piecemeal legislation has represented no relief to the thousands of American families with relatives in countries with heavily mortgaged and oversubscribed immigration quotas. This tragic situation is the result of that section of the McCarran-Walter Act which is admittedly based on national and racial discrimination-the national origins quota system, which remains today a target for Communist propaganda and making our effort to win over the uncommitted na

tions more difficult. It is based on the rejected racist assumption that people of one ethnic origin are superior-socially and culturally-to those of another. It was designed and is administered not to admit as many immigrants as we can readily absorb, but to exclude as many as possible.

Before I finish, I would like to say I have been on the floor and have fought these piecemeal immigration bills, always without success, because always there was somebody, some group of Senators, who felt that they had some interest in letting in sheepherders or some people as a result of some disaster in the Azores, or some other specialized group. It is this which has literally bribed the Congress into refraining from basically amending the immigration law. If there is one thing I would like to leave with this committee, it is the result of an experience I have almost written in blood myself and so have many of the others. It is the fact that I hope that this committee, just as it may have trouble putting this through because there are some very dug-in opponents to it, whether it is my bill or S. 500-so I hope we who are for immigration reform will just as stubbornly oppose any further piecemeal legislation until the job is done. It may hurt some individuals, but, Mr. Chairman, it will benefit millions of Americans-to-be. I think it is high time that we have the character to stand up against these piecemeal efforts to distract us and diffuse our energies and prevent us from basically reforming the immigration law.

I hope, Mr. Attorney General, that the administration will stand with us on that. It is the only way we will ever get this done, if those of us who are for immigration reform, who have been frustrated and may be frustrated again, will stand firm on no piecemeal admissions unless there is basic reform.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, very much, Mr. Javits.

Attorney General Katzenbach, would you be kind enough to introduce the persons who are with you to the committee?

STATEMENT OF ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL NICHOLAS deB. KATZENBACH; ACCOMPANIED BY NORBERT SCHLEI, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL; RAYMOND F. FARRELL, COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE; AND JAMES L. HENNESSY, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE

Attorney General KATZENBACH. Mr. Chairman, I have on my left here Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei, who is with the Office of Legal Counsel, who has been one of the principal draftsmen of the administration's bill. On my right I have the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, Ray Farrell, and his executive assistant, Jim Hennessy.

Senator KENNEDY. Would you proceed, sir?

Attorney General KATZENBACH. I have a statement; with your permission, I would like to read it, Mr. Chairman. Senator KENNEDY. Proceed.

Attorney General KATZENBACH. I am pleased to testify on behalf of S. 500, introduced by Senator Hart and 32 other Senators of both parties. This bill is the administration's immigration proposal, which President Johnson submitted January 13, 1965, in a special message.

The President urged the Congress to accord priority to this bill and I come today to stress the administration's view that there are few areas of legislative responsibility in which prompt action is more urgently needed.

There is urgency first of all in terms of simple humanity. Under present law, we are forcing families to be separated—indeed, in some cases, forcing mothers to choose between America and their children.

There is urgency in terms of our self-interest at home. Under present law we are depriving ourselves of brilliant, accomplished, and skilled residents of foreign countries who want to bring their talents here. As President Johnson observed in his immigration message, "This is neither good government nor good sense."

And there is urgency in terms of our self-interest abroad. In the present ideological conflict between freedom and fear, we proclaim to the world that our central precept is that all are born equal-and free thereafter to demonstrate their individual talents to the best of their ability. Yet under present law, we choose among immigrants not on the basis of what they can contribute to our social and economic strength, but on the basis of where they are-or, even, in some cases, their ancestors-happened to be born.

This bill is not designed to increase or accelerate the number of newcomers permitted to come to America. Indeed, this measure provides for an increase of only a small fraction in permissible immigration. The central purpose of this measure, rather is to help us choose among potential Americans according to standards that are fairer to them and more beneficial to us-better, in short, for everyone involved. To do this, we must eliminate the cause of the present warped standards—the national origins quota system. It is for these reasons that I come before you today to express as emphatically as possible my belief that this measure should be enacted, that it should be enacted speedily, and that it should be enacted with the fullest support.

Let me now outline the provisions of this measure against the background of existing law and its effects.

The present system embodies a 40-year-old method of limiting immigration from outside the Western Hemisphere. A maximum for such immigration is set; it now totals 158,361. This total is divided into quotas assigned to different countries according to the supposed national origins of the American population in 1920.

The

Within the quota for a given country, immigrant visas are allocated according to a scale of preferences. The first 50 percent of the quota is set aside for those whose specialized skills are "urgently needed" in the United States. The next 30 percent is set aside for parents and unmarried adult children of American citizens. remaining 20 percent is set aside for the spouses or unmarried children of permanent U.S. residents. A final preference is available to other close relatives of citizens, from any remaining quota vacancies. Only those vacancies as might then remain are available for others.

In general, the present system favors immigration from northern Europe and discriminates heavily against immigration from south

ern and eastern Europe and Asiatic countries. Three countries alone receive 70 percent of the total annual quota of 158,361. Great Britain, Germany, and Ireland receive that percent.

Such a system ought to be intolerable on principle alone. I do not know how any American could fail to be offended by a system which presumes that some people are inferior to others solely because of their birthplace. There is no democratic-indeed, no rational-basis for such discrimination. The harm it does to the United States and to its citizens is incalculable.

These evils of the national origins system in principle are compounded by its cruelties in practice, cruelties so needless that they alone provide abundant reason for changing this system. I spoke at the outset about three particularly damaging results of the national origins system. Let me describe them a little more fully now.

1. The first of these results is the separation of families which the national origins system repeatedly forces or prolongs. In theory, the present system of preferences is designed to give priorities to family ties. But in innumerable cases, these priorities cannot apply. It is only possible to give preferences when there are immigrant visas available to be apportioned in the first place. Many countries have quotas so small that even preference visas are not available for

years.

Meanwhile, it has not been possible to achieve even the discreditable original aim of the national origins system-to preserve the ethnic balance of our population as it existed in 1920. Some largequota countries consistently fall far short of using all their annual quota allotments. The present law does not permit these quota numbers to be reassigned to countries where they are sorely needed. As a result, fully one-third of the total authorized quota numbers are wasted each year.

Consequently, an American citizen with a mother in Greece must. wait at least 5 years and often longer-to secure a visa which would allow her to join him here. An American citizen with a brother or sister or married child in Italy cannot obtain a visa without a wait of many years.

Yet immigrants from favored countries, who have no family ties and no particular skills to offer to our country, can enter without difficulty and without delay. One employment service lists the following times necessary to bring domestics to the United States from various countries: from the United Kingdom and Ireland, 4 to 6 weeks: from Sweden, Belgium, and Germany, 8 to 12 weeks.

In other words, an American citizen may have to wait 5 years to bring his mother to this country. But he can bring in another woman, a total stranger, to be his maid, in weeks.

The pressures built up by such disparities results in occasional special corrective legislation. But the passage, from time to time, of special, short-term bills seems to me only to underscore the inequity and unworkability of the present system.

2. A second damaging result of the present national origins system is that it deprives us of persons whose skills can be of inestimable benefit to the United States. Again, the present preference system is designed to benefit such persons. But again, the priorities apply