Memorandum, "Summary of New Omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Bill"

SUMMARY OF NAV OMNIBUS IMMIGRATION AND NATUR/LIZATION BILL The proposed new omnibus immigration and naturalization bill (New Omnibus Bill) would moderniz the quota system by basing quotas on the 1950 census (thus increasing the total quota), would provide greater flexibility in the operation of the quota system by allowing the pooling of unused quotas, and would eliminate racial discrimination. It would admit to this country additional classes of deserving aliens without regard to quota restrictions and would establish a system of preferences, based on national need and family reunion, for most cuota immigrants while at the same time reserving a portion of each quota for self- initiated imigration. The New Omnibus Pill would assure adequate review of denial of visas and denial of admission to this country and would make the licCarran-Velter Administrative Procedure Act applicable to deportation cases. It would provide adequate protection against subversive and other undesirable aliens without resorting to abusable and repressive restrictions. In these provisions and in other vital matters of substance the New Omnibus Bill differs from S. 2550, recently reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The two bills correspond in general form, and in making many technical changes involved in codifying existing immigration and naturalization laws. The following summary of the major provisions of the I Jew Omnibus Bill emphasizes the principal changes that would be made in existing law and the most important differences between the New Omnibus Bill and S. 2550. 1. Non-quota status: The New Omnibus Bill would add several new classes of non-quota immigrants to those of existing law. Recognizing the desirability of reuniting families, the bill would exempt the immigrant parents of citizens from quota limitations. Other classes deserving special consideration to which non-quota status would be accorded are orphans entering the country for adoption and immigrants who have served honorably in the armed forces. "xisting laws grant non-quota status to immigrants born in Canada or in independent countries in Latin America but deny such status to immigrants born in colonies or dependent areas in the Western Hemisphere. The New Omnibus Bill would correct this obvious inequity. Furthermore, S. 2550 would reguire professors, who are now admitted as non-quota immigrants, to enter under quota restrictions. S. 2550 places unnecessary restrictions even on the time=honored non-quota status of religious ministers. The New Omnibus Bill would strengthen the provisions of existing law in regard to both ministers and professors. 2. Quotas: While adhering to the principle of establishing a ceiling on inmigration and while retaining the national origins quota system as the basis for the initial allocation of quotas, the New Omnibus Bill would make a number of much-needed improvements in the operation of the quota system. By providing for the use of the 1950 census as the basis for calculating quotas, rather than basing quotas on the 1920 census as would S. 2550, the New Omnibus Bill would take into account increases in population and changes in the composition of the population which have taken place in the last thirty years. The New Omnibus Bill would amend existing law so as to eliminate racially discriminatory features remaining from the Oriental Exclusion Act the features which have been so bitterly resented throughout Asia. S. 2550, too, purports to eliminate racial discrimination, but, instead, merely disguises it in a new form. In S. 2550 certain Oriental nations are given, for the first time, minimum quotas of 100 and the right to naturalization. But in place of outright exclusion, there is substituted the novel concept of an "Asia-Pacific Triangle" with a total limit of immigration from this area, and a mortgage against quotas in this area for all immigrants, wherever born, who can trace as much as 50% of their ancestry back to this area, however remotely. The New Omnibus Bill abjures not only this new form of racial discrimin- ation but all other racial discrimination existing in present law. Thus, the New Omnibus Bill rejects the intolerable exclusion of American Negroes from the census for purposes of establishing quotas, an exclusion provided in the Immigration Act of 1924 and proposed to be perpetuated in S. 2550. Also the New Omnibus Bill would grant equal non-quota status to all nations and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere, avoiding the further racially discriminating feature of S. 2550 which limits to 100 the possible immigrants from colonies, even those within the western hemisphere; this feature of S. 2550 discriminates especially against the natives of Jamaica, Trinidad, and other Caribbean dependencies. (present law gives these latter nationals the equivalent of non-quota status by charging immigrants from these dependencies against the quotas of the mother countries).