LosMesquites.com

the website of Nicole Salgado & Margarito Resendiz

"The idea behind this discriminatory policy [the National Origins Quota System] was, to put it baldly, that Americans with English or Irish names were better people and better citizens than Americans with Italian or Greek or Polish names . . . Such a concept is utterly unworthy of our traditions and our ideals. It violates the great political doctrine of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." It denies the humanitarian creed inscribed beneath the Statue of Liberty proclaiming to all nations "Give me your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . " In no other realm of our national life are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration . . . We welcome progress and change to meet changing conditions in every sphere of life, except in the field of immigration . . ." -President Harry Truman, upon his veto of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 (veto subsequently overridden by Congress)