Code for the Melting Pot

Give me your tired, your poor.

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

--Emma Lazarus' inscription for the Statue of Liberty

That torch held by the chatelaine of Bedloe's Island is now used to examine the family trees of would-be immigrants. Since 1924, entry to the U.S. has been strictly rationed under the principle of national origins. Last week in the Senate, it was made clear that Congress intends to keep it thus.

This principle, which still guides U.S. immigration policy, takes the 94 million U.S. white population of 1920, breaks it down into percentages according to foreign ancestry, and applies the percentages' to determine how many immigrants may enter from each country. The result, as intended, heavily favors North Europeans, drastically holds down entry of South and East Europeans. Example: out of a total of 154,000 immigrants allowed entry each year,* 41.4% may come from Britain and Northern Ireland, 11.2% from Ireland, only 3% from Italy, 2% from Greece.

Last week the principle of national origins came under heavy fire from Senate liberals. Up for debate and disposition was an omnibus immigration measure sponsored by Nevada's Pat McCarran. In essence, the bill proposes no real departure in policy. Product of almost three years of study and hearings by the judiciary committees, it is designed to bring thousands of piecemeal immigration statutes and regulations (accumulated since 1798) into one handy, compact code. In the process, it would remove some glaring inequities, e.g., all Asiatic immigrants would be eligible for citizenship, where previously Japanese and certain others were barred. But the McCarran bill accepts the principle of national origin without any reservation.

Cry for Equality. New York's Herbert Lehman, Rhode Island's John Pastore, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, and Illinois' Paul Douglas led a strong protest against holding to the old rules. The McCarran bill, they agreed, is "harsh . . . discriminatory . . . undemocratic." Lehman called for "a new approach to the whole subject of immigration . . . to demonstrate to the world that we are sincere in advocating principles based on equality of men of all races and nations." Pastore passionately urged: "We should take the roster of the American Army in World War II . . . and, upon the basis of those racial strains, judge our immigration law . . ."

Main changes demanded by the protestors:

P: Pooling of unused quotas; the McCarran bill keeps the old system under which unused quotas cannot be transferred to countries whose quotas are exhausted. P: Updating of population base, from 1920 to 1950, for determining quotas. P: Provisions to allow Orientals who are naturalized citizens of Western nations (e.g., Hong Kong Chinese) to immigrate under the quotas of their Western nationalities; the McCarran bill puts all Orientals, regardless of citizenship, in the small quotas assigned to their ancestral countries. P: Revamping of deportation rules and procedures; under the McCarran bill, it is at least theoretically possible for a naturalized citizen to be deported for a traffic violation.

Warning of Disaster. Windy old Pat McCarran took the floor for what was practically a singlehanded oratorical fight against the critics. Their proposals, he thundered, would be "disastrous" to the U.S.: ". . . opening of the gates to a flood of Asiatics . . . destruction of the national-origins quota system . . . would, in the course of a generation or so, change the ethnic and cultural composition of this nation."

When it came to lining up votes, McCarran swamped his opponents. By 44-28, the Senate rejected a motion to return his bill to committee. By 51-27, it turned down a Lehman-Humphrey substitute bill. Then, the opposition giving up, the McCarran bill was passed by a voice vote.

The House has already given overwhelming approval (206-68) to a similar measure. Next move is up to Harry Truman. Even if he vetoes the bill, basic immigration policy will not change. The U.S. will still be committed to the principle of national origins, which in many ways is as selfish and unjust as the liberals last week said it was. But in all the debate, nobody has appeared with a substitute principle that has much chance of acceptance by those already in the melting pot.

* Or one-sixth of 1% of the 1920 white population, a formula which became effective in 1929.

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