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Bills to Ease Immigration Introduced in Both Houses of Congress

January 25, 1961
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Six Senators, representing both parties, introduced two bills in the Senate yesterday providing for the liberalization of the existing immigration laws by modernizing the discriminatory national origins quota system and admitting on non-quota visas refugees from Cuba, North African areas, the Middle East, communist countries, and other trouble spots.

One bill would authorize non-quota visas for up to 40,000 refugee-escapees from world trouble spots, A second bill would revise the 1924 national origins quota system to reflect the 1960 rather than 1920 census. It would also permit the pooling of unused quotas and their reallocation at the discretion of the President. Sponsors of the two bills to implement major reforms included Senators Jacob K. Javits, Rep,, New York; Kenneth Keating, Rep., New York; Wayne Morse, Democrat, Oregon; Clifford P. Case, Rep., New Jersey; Leverett Saltonstall, Rep., Mass., and Hugh Scott, Rep., Pennsylvania.

Simultaneously, Rep. Seymour Halpern, New York Republican, introduced in the House of Representatives legislation identical to that entered in the Senate to issue non-quota visas for up to 40,000 refugees and broadly liberalize the national origins quota system.

The Halpern immigration bill contains a section barring Nazis and Fascists from the United States without the necessity of proving, as now required, that such individuals have actually advocated the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship in the United States itself. This-closes a loophole in the present immigration now permitting Nazis and other vicious anti-Semites to enter America and become naturalized under the excuse that they only advocated fascist policies abroad.

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