The Northwest Times

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 11 (JACL ADC)—Debate on Universal Military Training postpones possible House consideration of the Walter Omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Bill until next week at the earliest, the Washington office of the JACL Anti-Discrimination Committee announced today.

UMT is expected to be acted upon next Tuesday, according to House sources, so Congressman Emanuel Celler (D., N.Y.), chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee On Immigration and Naturalization and a sponsor of the omnibus legislation that bears his name, informed the Washington JACL ADC office that they have already requested the House Rules committee to schedule floor action next week on the immigration and naturalization measure immediately after the present business is settled.

Congressmen Celler and Walter have asked Chairman Adolph J. Sabath (D., Ill.) of the rules committee to hear their request for time at the next meeting of the committee which decides which measures are to be considered, when and under what conditions of debate. The rules committee is expected to meet either next Monday or Tuesday to consider this request.

At the same time, the Washington JACL ADC office revealed that Congressman Celler, one of the most respected liberals in Congress, had filed "Additional Views" to accompany the House Judiciary committee report on the Walter Omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Bill that includes JACL ADC-endorsed provisions for equality in immigration and naturalization.

While frankly admitting that the Walter bill as presently worded is a marked "improvement over existing law (which) cannot be doubted", Celler urges that the adoption of certain amendments would make it even better than it is.

He urges the pooling of unused quotas, use of the 1950 census as a basis for determining immigration quotas, and elimination of discrimination against the British West Indies colonies and Asians residing outside the Orient among his more important proposals.

Charging that the present quota system discriminates against the peoples of central, eastern, and southern Europe, he declared that a large percentage of the 154,000 annual quotas go to waste each year, since Great Britain and Ireland use only a small percentage of their annual quotas which total 42,800. Congressman Celler urges that the unused portions of the total annual quota should be distributed among countries with less than 7,000 annual quota allotments (all countries except Great Britain, Germany, and Ireland) in the same proportion as they bear to the total quota "pie".

He further noted that under the Displaced Persons Act future quotas of many countries have been mortgaged for many years. The New York liberal urged that the 1950 census figures be substituted for the 1920 figures presently used in computing quota allocations. "Without the benefit of the refined statistical research which we have at hand today, the (1920) conclusions were often erroneous," he said.

The fact that the Walter bill discriminates against emigration from Jamaica, Trinidad, and other British West Indies colonies was also noted in that ceilings of 100 for each of these countries within the quotas of the "mother country" are established, while natives of all other countries in the western hemisphere have non-quota status.

Congressman Celler also suggested that persons of Asian ancestry in all parts of the world be treated on the same basis as other peoples, instead of under an extension of the present laws governing the Chinese. "Although the proposed measure takes a most important step forward by making all people, regardless of race, eligible for immigration, the very same provisions of the bill establish a racial discriminatory rule for admission by declaring that a person born in any European or other country outside the Asia Pacific triangle, who is attributable by as many as one-half of his ancestry to a people or peoples indigenous to the Asia-Pacific triangle shall be chargeable not to the quota of the country of birth—but to the country of such of his ancestors as were Asiatic."

While deploring these shortcomings in the Walter omnibus bill and urging his fellow congressmen to amend the legislation on the floor, the New York Democratic liberal summed up his analysis of the measure as a real improvement over existing law, even as presently worded.

His office advised the JACL ADC that he would probably support the Walter Omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Bill even if none of his proposed amendments are accepted because he feels that any improvement over present statutes is a step forward.