Congressman Douglas to Renew Fight to Repeal “national Origins” Plan

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Notice was served by Congressman John J. Douglas of Massachusetts that the next session of Congress will see a determined effort to kill once and for all, the “national origins” immigration plan which in the last session was postponed a year.

This became known from an extension of remarks of Congressman Douglass in the Congressional Record. The last issue of the Record was not printed until some time after Congress adjourned.

Mr. Douglas declares that when the new Congress convenes in December he will introduce a resolution similar to the one he presented in the last Congress, providing for the repeal of the “national origins” clause.

“In taking such action,” he says, “I know I shall be fulfilling my duty to my country, and arrive at the correction of an outrageous act of injustice. Moreover, the action of the overwhelming majority of this body assures that my fight for the outright repeal of that odious feature of our immigration law will be successful.

“I say, and every right-thinking American likewise must maintain, that the repeal of national origins is absolutely necessary for the well-being of our nation and for the proper execution of the present immigration laws.”

Ridiculing the contention that the “national origin” of the country’s population can be ascertained by reference to names, Mr. Douglas asserts that his own name appeared in one of the earliest lists of Americans, spelled in a dozen different ways, yet “I proudly proclaim that I am the son of an Irish immigrant.”

“The national origins plan has absolutely no standing as a well-explained and authoritatively supported arrangement,” he continues. “It is time that the people of the country were relieved of eccentric experiments of the sort typified by this scheme. It is time that we should turn to much-needed problems of humanizing and liberalizing the arrangements and procedure now prevailing under our immigration law, such as various measures … to make possible the reuniting of families.

“I am glad that the national origins scheme has been postponed; I shall be still better pleased if we can quickly get rid of it for good at the very outset of the Seventieth Congress, so that we may take up immigration matters that have some practical and sensible basis and usefulness in the continued wonderful growth of our country.”

In the same issue of the “Record,” Representative Sabath of Illinois labels the “national origins” plan “a scheme for the purpose of further discrimination against certain nationalistic groups” and declares that it is “preeminently in the interest of the British and for the purpose of Anglicizing America.”

Mr. Sabath, saying that 100,000 Canadians can come into the United States outside of the British quota, also expresses the opinion that this fact would give England and its colonies more than 75 per cent of the total immigration into the United States.

Six thousand and fifty dollars were contributed to the Hias $500,000 Campaign by directors of the Municipal Bank, at a business meeting Thursday evening at the main office at Pitkin and Stone Avenues, Brooklyn, N. Y.