American immigration policies : a history

Ellis Island, New York, for many generations the crowded main gate of hope for millions of our immigrants, is now silent, deserted, "surplus government property." This does not mean immigration has ceased. Modern administrative procedures and techniques to meet both new and continuing problems have succeeded the impor tance of a site nostalgic to memory. The flow of immigration con tinues.

Between 1607 when the first permanent English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia, and the New Frontier of the 1960's, 42 million people migrated to the United States and were legally admitted. This is the greatest population movement in the history of mankind. By the time the World's Fair opens in 1964 the Federal Government will have completed its Museum of Immigration at the base of the Statue of Liberty, thus officially memorializing the contributions of immigrants to the building of America.

Our country is "a nation of immigrants." As such, she has on the whole, profited materially, spiritually and politically. No law is necessary to encourage aliens to come to the United States. They want to come. The problem has become one of excluding undesirables or admitting the better qualified. The criteria to be applied to do this is the crux of much disagreement.

There is general agreement that the United States can remain the effective champion of peace and freedom only if she keeps her in stitutions and culture intact. The impact of immigration on our in stitutions and culture is, and always has been, tremendous. Our immigrants and their descendants created a new society in the "New World." The citizens, through their elected representatives in Con gress, have written into the law of the land what they think our immigration policy should be. Pressure groups within and without the country have long been hard at work to change this policy. Some seek to make immigration a right instead of a privilege. Others wish to curtail the privilege. Hundreds of thousands of aliens constantly seek to enter this country outside the provisions of the law. Other thousands here legally seek to emain illeg if here illegally seek legal justification to remain.