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U.S. Immigration Laws Termed ‘old and Outmoded’; Liberalization Urged

October 16, 1959
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The present immigration laws were termed “old and outmoded” by Senator Jacob K. Javits, New York Republican, in an address before the American Immigration Conference now taking place here. He called for the liberalization of the immigration system.

The senator said the present quota system, based on the 1920 census which has a racial basis, “results in our being 75,000 to 100,000 quota numbers behind the times.” He added that it resulted also in disuses of one-third of the “outmoded quotas” each year “because the pooling of quotas is prohibited–although we have had three censuses since.”

Sen. Javits warned that the failure of the United States “to modernize our immigration laws is adverse to the interests of our foreign policy and adverse to our own domestic and social interests. The great saga of how this country was built by immigration should not be frustrated now.”

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