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President Coolidge last week sent to the United States Senate, the. report of the Secretaries of State, Commerce and Labour on the < national origins quotas which, if put into effect July 1 under the^ pr<^ visions of the present law, will cause a radical re-arrangement: pi^ immigration quotas. Provided President Coolidge issues a proclamation of the quotas on or before April 1, 1927, 153,541 immigrants will be admitted to the United States annually as compared with lo4,-<>77 and discrimination will be in favour of England and against Northern Europe, especially Germany. r*
The national origins basis for quotas is part of the IrarnigratioTi Act of 1924. When this act became a law it excluded theJapatfesfc and regulated immigration on the annual basis of two.per peflt. of each nationality according to the census of 1890. It was the first great move to favour the Nordics by basing immigration qujotas on a census of this country taken before the big influx frorri Southern Europe during the quarter century preceding the World War. The national origins provision, known as the Reed amendment, was tacked onto the Immigration Act in an atmosphere of high tension. It was rejected twice in the House through opposition based on discrimination against Germany in immigration, was later enacted by the House after much disagreement and then signed by the President.
The principle of the national origins provision is not based on the number of aliens in this country in any particular year. It would regulate immigration upon the national ancestry of the entire population. The quota is ascertained by determining the number of inhabitants in the United States having English, German, French oriother ancestry. To determine this quota in time for April 1, 1927, the national origins provision called for the formation of an Immigration Census Board of six men. It is the report of these men which the President received last week. ,
The figures prepared by the Immigration Census Board will give the bulk of the immigration to Great Britain and this is how1: Only ; 80,000 immigrants came into the United States within the first two and a half centuries after America was known. By 1740 this number had grown to 1,000,000 and any Immigration from 1740 to 1790 was almost exclusively from the British Isles. According to the iirst census in 1790 there was a population of 3,929,214, mostly descendants of the original, predominantly British 80,000. The United States Census Bureau estimates that from these half the population of the United States has descended. All other nations together make up less than twelve per cent, of the descendants of colonial stock, of which Germany had five per cent, and the Netherlands three per cent.
If President Coolidge proclaims the new quotas on April 1 the following changes will take place in the flow of immigration into the .United States: Great Britain's quota will be increased from 34,000 to about 85,000; the Irish Free State will be allowed only 8,530 instead of the present quota of 28,567; Germany, 20,028 instead of 51,227; Norway, 2,053 instead of 6,453; Poland, 3,072 instead of 9,561. Russia's quota, cut from 24,4�5 to 2,248 by the 1924 law, would be twice as many as now. Italy, whose quota of 42,057 was cut to 3,845, would get almost a double increase.
Will the President proclaim the quotas which will admit immigrants in numbers based on national strength as represented by the country's great-great-grandfathers? There are clauses in the national origins amendment which say that "The President shall proclaim and make known the quotas so reported . . . on or before April 1, 1927. If the proclamation is not made on or before such date, quotas proclaimed therein shall not be in effect for any fiscal year beginning after the expiration of the proclamation."
. Enemies of the national origins scheme say that it can thus fail to go into effect simply by the failure of the President to proclaim the findings of the Immigration Census Board; that the whole thing rests with him. There will be plenty of enemies although as yet it is not widely known that the time is almost at hand for the Reed amendment of 1924 to go into effect. There are millions of people in the United States of German, Irish and Norwegian birth or descent who have contributed greatly to the upbuilding of the country. It is inconceivable that these and their friends will not force a fight.
The problem of immigration in the United States is no longer met in the spirit of Walt Whitman, who said: "Our destiny is to become not a conqueror nation but to become the mofel frientfiy nati^^-the modem composite, formedjrorn all, welcoming all."- The** ia-ir^nd* gap between the humamtariari law of 1852 regulating ^fttflleftt of -alien* in ahira en route to America and the death of the melting oot
CANADIAN JEWISH R1FE1EW
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JANUARY 14, 1927
VOLUME VLII, NUMBER U
idea. There have come to pass the illiteracy test of 1917, ^Uota restrictions, racial discriminations, the two per cent. law and Noetic superiority. Perhaps, considering the trend, it is too much to hope tor a repeal of the national origins amendment by Congress, but the possibility of any change in immigration legislation in this coiyrtry ia of vital interest to the Tews. fjjc
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