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PASTOR GENER AL'S REPORT, OCTOBER 25, 1985
President Truman [in 19481 •••d ismissed as "absurd an d cruel"
the "outdated notion" that immigration should bear any
resemblance to the ethnic composition of a country. Rather,
he inferred that it should be an instrument with which
government would be able to realign the racial proportions of
a nation
to imitate a global conf iguration.
Such a
redistributive vision•••required a far greater infusion of
non-European
immigrants
into
the
United
States••••
[Nevertheless, for a number of years the country was guided
by the Immigration and Naturalization (McCarran-Walter) Act
of 1952 which continued to stress the concept of "national
origins" and gave preferential quotas to immigrants of
European origin.
Yet, increasing numbers of non-European
immigrants entered by means of non- quota loopholes in the
law. l
In an effort to "realize humanitarian objectives," [President
John F. Kenned y] proposed abolition of the national-origins
system.
"In an age of interdependence among nations," he
wrote, "such a system is an anachronism, for it discriminates
among applicants•••on the basis of birth."••• John Kennedy
[was] vehemently oppose d to immigration laws that accorded-
in theory at least--preference to northern and western
Europeans•••• Mr. Kennedy specifically favored increases in
the numbers of Asian and West Ind ian immigrants••••
In 1965, during a special message to Congress,; ••President
[Lyndon B. l Johnson demanded the elimination of national
quotas.
With bipartisan support in both Houses, the
President•••succeeded in end ing 145 years of continuity in
immigration law•••• Clearly, the philosophy that immigration
should be "a mirror held up before the nation, reflecting the
peoples who composed it," had expired.
The politically
astute Texan sensed the monumental social transformation that
was being engineered within the United States, an d took
ad vantage of it.... He was appealing to al1 of the non
Northwestern European immigrant communities of the nation.
He was courting the recently politicized urban Negroes••••
One of the prime movers behin d the new immigration
legislation was Senator Ed ward Kennedy••••
The movement within Congress received unqualified support
from the nation's press. Popular period icals such as LIFE,
SCIENTIFIC AMERICA, THE NEW REPUBLIC, an d TIME featured
articles and ed itorials enthusiastically supporting the
President's initiative•••• Taking exception to the new
immigration law, Professor Ernest van den Haag wrote: "The
wish to preserve one's identity an d the identity of one's
nation
fequi res
no justification--and
no belief
in
superiority--any more than the wish to have one's own
children, and to continue one's family th rough them need be
justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior
to the children of others•••• One identifies with one's
family, because it is one's family--not because they are
better people than other's.
For no other reason one
•