Statue of Liberty Reconsidered

Although Edward J. Corsi has demonstrated that the immigration program is a "failure," the Administration listens hopefully to the promises of Secretary Dulles and Scott McLeod that we shall fill our quotas. By this time, however, few people remain so naive as not to realize that the present national origins quota is discriminatory. The McCarran Act or even the Refugee Relief Act could hardly be called welcome mats.

Both Democrats and Republicans realize the inadequacies of the McCarran Act and have pledged support to its revision. In an attempt to avoid the quotas, in 1953 Congress accepted President Eisenhower's Refugee Relief Act admitting 209,000 immigrants under an emergency program. But like the McCarran Act, RRA was fouled up by the inefficiency of the immigration service and the complexity of security and eligibility requirements.

Although Senator Herbert Lehman and Representative Emanuel Celler, both Democrats, have introduced a revised omnibus immigration bill, neither the House nor the Senate will consider supporting it. Because it is politically dangerous to arouse the conservatives who do not want the "mongrelizing" effects of increased immigration, the United States today maintains a 30-year-old policy symbolic of the blazing KKK.

Opening the gates to an increased flow of immigration, however, is economically advantageous. Immigration has always had the effect of raising the standards of native labor, points our Oscar Handlin '35, professor of History. By taking the lowest places in industry and agriculture and, as consumers, by expanding the domestic markets, the immigrants help them who were earlier to advance into superior clerical, managerial, or professional positions. Formerly, such a policy would have been bucked by the labor unions, but now with their security guaranteed, the American Federation of Labor has come out strongly in favor of greater immigration.

Also, as demonstrated by Handlin, we pour millions of dollars in foreign aid into countries which are overpopulated and where the benefit of the aid does not reach the individual. But by accepting only 1,000 from such countries, economic experts predict that these nations could stand on their own feet.

Whether it be for economic or moral reasons it is apparent that our immigration laws must be revised. Congress has too often bowed to the issue's partisans. The Administration owes the country a respectable immigration law.