Immigration: Historic Homage

They came from every part of the globe, speaking a babble of tongues and carrying little but hope as luggage. From 1840 on, they arrived in a wave that was perpetually at flood tide, furnishing the growing U.S. with the sinew and spirit to build its railroads and create its industries. Often they faced a grinding struggle for survival in the New World's harsh slums and wind-whipped prairies, but somehow the immigrants managed to take root. Out of their extraordinary exodus — which John F. Kennedy called "the largest migration of people in all recorded history" —rose an extraordinary nation.

Last week, 400 years after the Spaniards arrived in Florida to establish the first settlement in the continental U.S., the nation's Congress paid historic hom age to the heterogeneous men who helped build the U.S. By a 76 to 18 vote, the Senate adopted a sweeping new immigration reform bill that strikes down the restrictive " national origins" quota system that has discriminated against Southern Europeans and Asians since 1924, when nearly 80% of white Americans traced their forebears to northern and western Europe. "After 40 years, we have returned to first principles," said Massachusetts' Senator Teddy Kennedy, the floor manager of the bill and himself the grandson of immigrants. "Immigration, more than anything else, has supplied America with the human strength that is the core of its greatness."

First Come, First Served. In accordance with the Senate bill, the national origins system will be scrapped entirely in July 1968, when all nations outside the West ern Hemisphere will be allotted a total of 170,000 immigrant visas on a first-come, first-served basis. The maximum for any one nation will be 20,000 — a figure exceeded last year only by Germany's 22,628 and the United Kingdom's 28,653. Until then, the unused allotments of such high-quota na tions as Britain and Ireland will be transferred to such low-quota lands as Italy and India, where would-be immigrants now often have to wait a decade or more for their turn.

The Senate bill differs in one major respect from a bill that was approved by the House in a 318 to 95 vote in August. For the first time, a numerical restriction of 120,000 immigrants was imposed on the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Under Administration pressure, the House had retained the old bill's provision permitting unlimited immigration from Canada and Latin America, but the Senate rejected the provision as unfair to all the other nations of the world. When the bill goes to a Senate-House conference shortly, the restriction is expected to remain. In addition, an estimated 60,000 parents, children or spouses of U.S. citizens will be admitted each year regardless of nationality. Though the bill will increase annual immigration to 350,000 a year, some 60,000 above current levels, it inspired only halfhearted resistance; all 18 nays came from Southerners, mostly Democrats.