The United States Senate today passed the Administration’s immigration reform bill, ending the discriminatory national origins quota system, by a vote of 76 to 18.
After a Senate-House conference reconciles differences between the House version, adopted August 25, and the Senate wording, the bill will go to the President for signature.
The measure, adopted today contains the basic legislation sought by the Administration to pool unused quotas and phase out the biased quota system by 1968. It contains other provisions to facilitate entry of immigrants from abroad and end the national origins quota system established in 1924.
Passage of the bill was not a complete victory for the Administration, however. The Senate, for the first time in history, imposed a ceiling on immigration from Western Hemisphere countries. This was the major difference between the Senate bill passed today and the House-adopted measure which left Western Hemisphere immigration unrestricted.
A heated debate preceded final action, in which a number of Southern senators felt the ending of the quota system undermined the European cultural and racial background of white Americans. The final vote found 52 Democrats and 24 Republicans favoring the bill. Opposed were 15 Democrats and three Republicans.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
