I might say parenthetically I have a large number of my constituency that have relatives from Italy, and a good part of my constituency, approximately one-third of the city of Rochester, is made up of Italian Americans. I have a great deal of experience in this particular

area.

Because of the makeup of the population of my district and because of the predominance of highly skilled industries in the Rochester, N.Y., area, I am called upon by great numbers of constituents to help solve or expedite the solutions of immigration problems. I can say without question that over 80 percent of the cases I am asked to help with involve either the Western Hemisphere limitation or the present situation in the skilled preferences as the major legal barrier.

After handling a number of these cases, it becomes obvious that too many cases arise where the law is either arbitrary or unjust. An example is the recent case of a physician, born in Hong Kong and living in England, who was contacted as part of a worldwide search to attract more physicians to practice in Wayne County in my district. This area suffers from one of the most severe doctor shortages in the Nation. In the case of this doctor, an obstetrician, the place of his birth and the existing preference system would have operated to keep him out of the United States indefinitely. There is just no prospect under existing law that skilled and labor-certified people from Hong Kong and several other places will have visa numbers available to them. The "preference" in this case is no preference at all, but a barrier to Dr. Chan and to the people in my district he would be serving.

After writing to a number of officials on this case, you and Chairman Celler suggested to me that the parole procedure might be the only way to admit this man. We had excellent cooperation in accomplishing this, but because a parolee has no standing as a permanent resident alien, and because permanent resident status is necessary in order to obtain a license to practice medicine in most States, it was necessary for the New York State Legislature to pass a special private bill permitting Dr. Chan to be licensed despite his uncertain immigration status. He is now here and is practicing, and he was able to bring his family with him under the parole.

I might say parenthetically again that I had tremendous cooperation from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Immigration Director, Mr. Farrell.

But in order for Dr. Chan to enjoy any future here as a citizen, he will need permanent resident status. Under present law, the only possible way to accomplish this in a resonable time is to go beyond the law by introducing a private bill, which I have done in this case.

I review this case only because it is a good example of the hardships created under present law for those seeking admission for reasons of special and necessary skills.

A key provision of the bill now before this Subcommittee would increase the percentage of visa numbers allocated to the skill preferences, and would, I hope, breathe some new meaning into the word "preference," as it applies to these categories. The procedure of labor certification is retained to protect our economy and American workers from an influx of immigrants who would threaten American jobs, but the artificial barrier such as that faced by Dr. Chan I mentioned would be lowered considerably. I welcome and heartily support this provision.

I believe enactment of this bill will virtually eliminate countless instances of aliens working out of status or without permission, and instances of the visitor status being abused because it is the only available avenue to bring in those who otherwise would have to wait years for admission.

Of all of the other provisions in the bill, I will take time to mention only one more. That is the provision which redefines the foreign residency requirements and the hardship provisions for exchange visitors. I strongly believe that the requirement of 2 years' foreign residence should be maintained for natives of underdeveloped nations, where hardship to an American citizen husband, wife, or child is not involved. I do not believe it should be arbitrarily applied to natives of well-developed nations, some of whom have less need for the skills of these people than we in America do; nor do I believe that the hardship provisions should be harshly applied. In both respects, I think H.R. 15093 codifies the results many have tried to seek through administrative means. I believe it is a great improvement over existing law in this

area.

Mr. Chairman, I have already taken up much of the Subcommittee's time. I am grateful for the opportunity to express my support for our bill, and I, again, want to emphasize that your leadership in recognizing the problems in the existing law and in acting to solve them is a tribute to the conscience and to the professional approach of this subcommittee. I do not pretend to be an authority on the intricacies of immigration law. I know that the men on this subcommitee are experts. I merely thought it would be useful to give you the benefit of my views, as one who has approached the problem on a case-by-case basis. From that point of view, this bill hits the nail on the head in attacking many of the quirks in the new law by making fine-tuned adjustments in the letter of the law without tampering with the spirit of the 1965 act. If anything, H.R. 15093 gives more meaning to the spirit of the 1965 law, which was to put an end to arbitrariness and discrimination in our immigration policies.

I know you will consider carefully each provision of this bill and that you will find it necessary to make some changes. I trust, however, that you will see fit to act as promptly as possible so that some of these problems will have redress before we adjourn the 91st Congress. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I do want to refer to one other thing. Of recent date, we have had some change in the unemployment situation in our country. In my district, the unemployment figure has been down in the past, around 1.3, 1.5, or 1.6 percent. More recently, it has been near 3 percent, which I realize is substantially low, but there are people in the skilled crafts who have tried to go back into Canada. I had occasion recently to write to the Director of Programs and Procedures Branch of the Department of Manpower and Immigration of the Canadian Government. He made this point in replying to me with regard to these skilled people going into Canada for work available there. He said:

On the subject of employment in this country-
Meaning Canada-

people who wish to work here normally must first be admitted as immigrants. I might mention here that immigration to Canada is not based on quotas or

percentages. Anyone is free to apply. Those who meet the objective criteria of our regulations (based on such factors as education and training, age, skills, and current occupational demands in Canada, and so forth), are eligible for admission as permanent residents. With respect to nonimmigrants or visitors, our policy is simple and straightforward. As a rule, they are not permitted to work but we admit workers from abroad or allow them to take employment when there are no qualified Canadian workers available or there is a need for the special services of those coming temporarily as keymen in the establishment or servicing of an enterprise located or locating in Canada.

That is the end of his quote.

It does indicate that Canada has taken a substantially more liberal approach to this than our 1965 act as it has been interpreted. I think the bill we have introduced puts us back on the right track and removes this artificial barrier between us and Canada, in regard to this matter of immigration.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I do want to thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Mr. FEIGHAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Horton, for your very excellent presentation.

On page 6, you mentioned skilled people or doctors from welldeveloped countries. You probably are familiar with the law recently passed, Public Law 91-225, affecting these exchange visitors and international executives. I think, to a great extent, it was very helpful in solving the problem that you have referred to.

Mr. HORTON. It is. I do commend the Committee for that. I supported that bill and I think it did help to alleviate some of the problems between our country and Canada. In this particular instance with Dr. Chan, who was not here and was not on any exchange program, his place of origin was Hong Kong and so it did not relate to Canada. As I indicated in my statement, because of the preference system, anyone coming from Hong Kong is practically unable to get here because of the low quota.

Mr. FEIGHAN. I was very much pleased to learn about the action of the New York State Legislature in passing private legislation to enable this doctor to take the examination and become a licensed medical practitioner. We have had many instances where a person is an able physician but is disqualified from taking the examination because he is not a citizen. Of course, we feel that it would be better if the States would permit these doctors at least to take the examination before they are a citizen. It is up to the State legislature to prescribe the rules and regulations, and I hesitate to take over the authority of the States by determining that this man shall become a citizen to avoid the restriction by the particular State that required him to become a citizen before he could take the examination.

Mr. HORTON. In this particular instance, I talked with Colonel King, the District Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Buffalo, N.Y., and acted, based on a letter which he had sent which was also substantiated by Commissioner Farrell. In talking to Colonel King, it became obvious that the doctor couldn't practice unless, based on the statement from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he could not have sufficient status to make application to practice in New York State. So I brought this to the attention of the assemblyman representing the district and the State senator and both of them, Ted Day, the State senator, and Assemblyman Joseph Finley, brought it to the attention of the legislature and passed

a special exemption in the case of this doctor. Although he is not admitted as an immigrant, he was still able to do this.

I hope it is the kind of a landmark case which can be held to in other States. One of the serious problems we do have is this matter of getting skilled professional help in our country and especially in rural areas. Even though we have to do a lot to provide better medical facilities and train more doctors and provide more of our own doctors we are not able to meet the medical demands. In this instance it was a case, I think as you have indicated, of the State taking action which was highly appropriate to aid in this situation. So the doctor is practicing medicine right now in New York with his family and everyone is very happy and pleased about the situation.

We have not been hurt at all. We brought a good doctor into the United States with a good family and the people in this rural community are pleased and they have got medical services they didn't have before.

Mr. FEIGHAN. Mr. Rodino.

Mr. RODINO. Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I would like to commend the gentleman. He has been very concerned and I know he has been most diligent in pursuing this question. I know that he has contacted me on many, many occasions in the interests of his constituents seeking relief from the inequities that do exist.

I want to commend him for his statement. I would like to

Mr. HORTON. If the gentleman would let me interrupt, I want to thank you, too, for the help that you have given me on many occasions because you and I have had similar problems with Italian Americans in my district and you have had a number in yours. You have been very helpful as an expert in this field to me in some of these very serious problems. I take this opportunity to thank you for the assistance that you have given me and my district.

Mr. RODINO. Thank you very much.

I want to direct a few questions to you and ask for your comments and your observations. Recognizing that you may not be, as you claim, intimately acquainted with all aspects of the immigration laws, you nevertheless show a great deal of knowledge about the existing problems. You point to the peculiar status of Canada and Mexico. We are aware of the problems caused by this peculiar status. We have common undefended borders with these countries and there are problems peculiar to these countries that are not related to other countries.

My bill, H.R. 17370, would provide nonquota status for Canada and Mexico without setting a numerical limitation. It would, however, require a labor certification similar to the labor certification that we require of the Eastern Hemisphere countries.

How does this strike you?

Mr. HORTON. I am not familiar with the provisions of your bill. I apologize for not being familiar with it, and perhaps I should have been familiar with it before I came to testify on this particular bill. Do you have an overall limitation?

Mr. RODINO. I have an overall worldwide 250,000 ceiling.

Mr. HORTON. Which would apply to Canada and Mexico? Is there distinction between the two nations?

Mr. RODINO. The ceiling is not applicable to Canada and Mexico. All of the other countries will have their per country limitation increased to 25,000 each.

Mr. HORTON. I realy don't see too much objection to that insofar as you do provide for the labor certification. I think the stopgap is the labor certification. In other words, if there is labor certification required, then I think this would be a stopgap. It is interesting in the figures that I put into the Congressional Record, and which the chairman permitted me to put into this record, to note the situation with regard to Canada.

In fiscal 1964, for example, Canada had some 38,000 people that immigrant visas were issued to. In 1965 it was 40,000, and then in 1965 it went down to 25,000; 1967, 24,000; in 1968 it was down to 29,000 and in 1969 it was down to 15,000. This I think was brought about by the overall limitation in the Western Hemisphere and making Canada compete with Mexico and these other nations which I think tended to raise these barriers between our two nations which had not been there before.

The point I am making is that insofar as putting the quotas on Canada, if it is an overall quota and they have to compete, then you might find the same situation that you have here. You don't have, as far as I am concerned

Mr. RODINO. My 250,000 ceiling is exclusive of Canada and Mexico. The reason I mention that is because I note in your statement you make reference to the possibility of considering raising each country's limit to 30,000. In my bill it does raise the country's limitation to 25,000. Mr. HORTON. I wouldn't find any objection to that.

Mr. RODINO. You make some reference to Mr. Reid's bill, H.R. 2711, which would deal with the peculiar problem experienced by Ireland, for example, as well as to the other former high-quota or high-priority countries. I would like you to know that we in the Subcommittee recently reported out a bill which was my bill, the Rodino-Cahill bill, which would deal with the problem. We sought therein to allocate the so-called unusued numbers that did then exist up until 1968 to those high-quota countries. The reason that we did it in this way, was so that we would not perpetuate any of the national origins concept where we gave preference to some of the countries of Northern Europe as against some of the other countries. I think if you would take a look into that you might find this is a bill that might fit that pattern.

Mr. HORTON. As the gentleman knows, I talked with you and our former colleague, Bill Cahill, on a number of occasions about this problem from these high-quota countries.

Hickey-Freeman, Fashion Park, Michaels-Stern, Bonds and some of the other clothing manufacturers are in my district. We have had some very severe problems in getting trained tailors in-mainly from low-quota countries. Because of this backlog they had people qualified to come in but because of the preference numbers they couldn't get these people. They have had to do everything possible to try to get these people qualified; the labor certification has been obtained, but they are in the pipeline. They can not come in for 1, 2, 3, or 4 years. Many men's clothing firms are trying to expand, and I am most familiar with them because I worked very closely with them; for example, Hickey-Freeman was trying to expand and other clothing companies trying to expand were not able to expand because they could not get the skilled labor.