Mr. FEIGHAN. There is another old chestnut. Just recently I was talking to some officials of some foreign governments who are still disturbed by this so-called brain drain. Of course, our Commission report, if I remember correctly, stated it was the general view that the brain drain issue is a subject for the country of emigration more than the United States.

Mr. SCAMMON. Yes.

Mr. FEIGHAN. In my opinion, that is the answer to it. Do you have any further comment on this subject?

Mr. SCAMMON. I would say I think it is not the function of the United States to say that we won't take people who can help us and who can make a contribution to the United States if they want to come here.

If the country from which they come wants to chain them down, that is their problem. We can't make moral judgments for all of our friends around the world.

I think all we can say is that brain drain can work both ways. It has worked both ways. Some of our Canadian friends will protest vehemently that a very large proportion of the academic personnel in Canadian universities are in fact American. They might have a view that the brain drain ought to be undrained or unbrained.

In any event, I just feel that those who would intervene with the free movement of people must make the case. I just don't really feel that you have to make the case in favor of not taking action, that you ought to take action unless you can make a case against it.

Put it the other way around. The more you inhibit the free movement of people anywhere, the more you diminsh freedom of communication. I just wouldn't be in favor of it unless it were clearly indicated there was an absolute need for it.

Mr. FEIGHAN. Mr. Eilberg?
Mr. EILBERG. No questions.
Mr. FEIGHAN. Mr. Dennis?

Mr. DENNIS. No, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. FEIGHAN. On behalf of the Subcommittee, Mr. Scammon, I want to express our appreciation for your contribution, which will be very helpful to us.

Mr. SCAMMON. Thank you, Mr. Feighan. It is always nice to be with you and the members of the Subcommittee and its staff.

Mr. FEIGHAN. We are adjourned until next Wednesday.

(Whereupon, at 10:50 a.m., the Subcommittee recessed, to reconvene Wednesday, July 29, 1970.)

TO AMEND THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1970

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE No. 1 OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
Washington, D.C.

The Subcommittee met at 10:17 a.m., in room 2337, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael A. Feighan (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Rodino, Eilberg, and Dennis.

Also present: Garner J. Cline, Counsel, and Donald G. Benn, Associate Counsel.

Mr. FEIGHAN. The Subcommittee will come to order.

This morning the Immigration and Nationality Subcommittee will hold the third hearing in a series to consider certain aspects of Western Hemisphere Immigration and modification of the preference system presently in effect for the Eastern Hemisphere.

Lawyers practicing daily in the field of immigration, naturalization, and nationality law can provide valuable insight into the functioning of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The benefit of their experience is most useful to the deliberations of this Subcommittee.

The subcommittee is privileged to have as a witness Mr. Edward L. Dubroff, who will testify on behalf of the Association of Immigration and Nationality Lawyers. Mr. Dubroff has given us the benefit of his knowledge and expertise as a witness in the past. I am confident that his comments, as usual, will be exceedingly helpful to us.

On behalf of the Subcommittee, Mr. Dubroff, I want to extend to you a very warm and cordial welcome.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD L. DUBROFF, ASSOCIATION OF
IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY LAWYERS

Mr. DUBROFF. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name is Edward L. Dubroff. I am an attorney-at-law, duly admitted to practice in the State of New York and have been for the last 41 years. I am a past president of the Association of Immigration and Nationality Lawyers and presently a member of its board of governors, as well as editor of its publication, the Immigration Bar Bulletin. In addition, I now am chairman of its committee on legislation.

The Association of Immigration and Nationality Lawyers is a bar association incorporated in the year 1946 under the laws of the State of New York. Its members are attorneys who specialize in the practice of law involving problems of immigration, nationality, and naturaliza

tion. It has members throughout the United States and chapters in a number of its principal cities.

I am duly authorized by the president of the association to appear here today and give testimony on behalf of the association as to its views and thoughts on the matters presently under consideration by the committee.

I might say, by way of background, that of the 41 years of my practice, the last 27 have been devoted almost exclusively to the specialized practice of problems in immigration, nationality and naturalization. I say this not as a matter of self-praise, but so that the committee and the record will know that I speak with some experience and represent an organization which has daily contact with all of the problems which, to some Members of Congress, rarely are heard of or come to their attention.

In the period of time allotted to any witness at a hearing such as this, it is almost impossible to take three companion bills such as H.R. 9112, Congressman Celler's bill; H.R. 15092, Congressman Feighan's bill, and H.R. 17370, Congressman Rodino's bill, and pick them apart section by section and attempt to evaluate which should be enacted and which should not. Instead, my committee on legislation and the officers that I represent, have authorized me to testify on the basis of a broad spectrum with a broad brush and make myself available to questions by members of the Committee in the event that occasion should arise.

First, we favor a worldwide unified ceiling. We believe that the amount should be 300,000 per annum. We believe that in this ceiling Canada and Mexico should be included. I will give my reason for that in a moment.

This would substitute 300,000 numbers per annum in place of the present 170,000 numbers per annum for Eastern Hemisphere natives and 120,000 numbers per annum for Western Hemisphere natives. For some 40-odd years, between 1924 and 1965, when the Act of October 3, 1965 was enacted into law, there was in practice what was then known as the "good neighbor" policy. The doctrine was that we had good neighbors to the north and south of us, and that because of that they should enter as immigrants without quota limitations and without restrictions of any kind other than the usual overcoming of the grounds of exclusion that all immigrants must face, and principally to establish that they were not likely to become public charges. That latter requirement, incidentally, was the greatest deterrent to Western Hemisphere immigration even under the nonquota system. In 1965, the situation changed because Congress said that effective July 1, 1968, unless Congress enacted to the contrary, a ceiling of 120,000 per annum should fall upon the Western Hemisphere, which included Canada and Mexico.

Congress saw fit not to adopt the recommendations of the Western Hemisphere Commission and let the ceiling go into effect.

This also was done despite the pleas and protestations of the State Department's witnesses who testified that our neighbors to the north and the south would be offended.

While I am not privy to international communications, I would assume from the lack of any news appearing in the public press, there

have not been any screams or outcries regarding the abandonment of the good neighbor policy.

Now, as in the Rodino bill-and I mean no disrespect by just saying Rodino, Feighan, or Celler, it would be just that way. In the Rodino bill, Canada and Mexico would be treated as good neighbors. They would not be in any worldwide ceiling. We would then be reversing the trend, the pattern that was established in 1965. We would in effect be saying to Central and South America and the islands in the Caribbean, "Of all of our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere, we still have two good ones, Mexico and Canada." That would be the indirect effect.

Our association does not favor, if this concept is to be eliminated, the theory of a favored country in description or treatment.

I would, therefore, say that it is our considered opinion, although there had been a great deal of reluctance over the years, that just like evolution, a unified worldwide ceiling is inevitable. It must come, and a greater reason for its coming is its inequities at the present time.

We all do things today thinking we have accomplished the best there is in whatever endeavor we seek to project.

Two weeks later, sometimes in the cold light of sober judgment, we say, "What have we wrought, what have we done?"

Now in 1965, it looked like we had a pretty good system set up: 170,000 for the Eastern Hemisphere, 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere, and that would keep immigration just about level with what statistics showed had been coming in, 300,000-odd per year. But what was not considered then and could not be considered in advance, but now must be considered in the light of practical hard experience and present-day problems, is the place of section 212 (a) 14, the labor certification section.

I might say that Congress was then so imbued with the spirit of eliminating discrimination that when it reenacted section 202(a) and said no person shall receive any preference or priority in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence except as specifically provided in certain qualifying sections, it also put into that phrase the words "or be discriminated against." So that actually it would look as though Congress had come out with a declaration that nobody could be discriminated against except as provided in the statute.

I know that was not the intention of the Congress, but there is discrimination today because of the system, particularly because the Western Hemisphere is now operating without a preference system which is comparable in any way to the preference system imposed on the Eastern Hemisphere.

For example, a native of an independent country of the Western Hemisphere who is a brother of a U.S. citizen is required to obtain a labor certification because 212 (a) 14 does not exempt him from it. He gets no priority, whereas if the same brother were born in a country of the Eastern Hemisphere, his brother who is in the United States and is a citizen could petition for him for a fifth-preference priority and, except for Italy, would have him in here in rather short order.

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