The National Origins clause of the 1924 Immigration Act, twice postponed and declared by President-elect Hoover as unworkable and deserving of repeal, will most likely go into eeffct on July 1, 1929. The Senate Immigration Committee, by a vote of 7 to 4, rejected the resolution introduced by Senator Nye to again postpone the provision for another year. A similar bill was recently introduced into the House by Congressman Chindblom of Illinois. It has not yet been reported by the House Immigration Committee.
The vote was taken following a number of hearings held by the Senate Immigration Committee, during which testimony was heard from the opponents as well as the advocates of the National Origins plan which would reduce the present quotas by 15,000 annually and would bring about a rearrangement in the allocations for the various countries on the basis of the national origins of the United States population as of 1890. The countries whose quotas will be reduced greatly by the application of the National Origins plan are Germany, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries and Roumania. As an example, Ireland, which has a quota under the present law of 28,567, will have a quota of 7,427; Germany, which has a quota of 51,227, will have 24,908; Roumania, with a quota of 603, would have 311. On the other hand, the quotas from Russia and Poland will gain slightly. Russia, which under the present law has a quota of 2,248, will have 3,540; Poland, with 5,982 at present, will have 6,090. The total number of immigrants to be admitted annually to the United States is not to exceed 150,000.
Senator Nye declared, following the vote in the Committee, that he will consider a way of re-introducing his resolution on the floor of the Senate, although under the usual procedure it would be difficult since the Committee has decided to report the resolution unfavorably. He would do so in order to uphold President-elect Hoover, he said. He may move for the discharge of the Committee and ask for a vote by the Senate. It is possible that those Senators who are supporting President-elect Hoover and the Democratic Senators opposing the National Origins plan may muster a majority for the vote.
The Data Sheet of the Key Men of America, published privately by Fred R. Marvin, reported extensively the proceedings of the Women’s Patriotic Conference on National Defense held in Washington on January 29, at which Senator David A. Reed, of Pennsylvania, author of the National Origins Plan, spoke in favor of the plan. The conference adopted a series of resolutions in favor of restrictive (Continued on Page 4)
The National Immigration Restrictive Conference, of which John B. Trevor of New York is chairman, conducted an intensive campaign in Washington against the postponement of the National Origins provision. It published full page advertisements in the Washington newspapers urging Senators to block the Nye resolution.
Before the vote of the Committee, Victor Frank Ridder of the “Staatszeitung,” New York German daily, appeared at the hearing to oppose the going into effect of the National Origins provision. Three other witnesses favored the plan, opposing the Nye resolution. They were Congressman McCormick of Massachusetts, J. Edward Cassidy and F. H. Kennicutt of Washington.
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