Nation: The Foreign Aid & Immigration Bills

THE price tag on foreign aid requested for fiscal 1966 is an all-time low of $3.38 billion, down from $3.51 billion requested last year—but more than the $3.25 billion that Congress granted. Nevertheless, the new program, said President Johnson, is “the lowest aid budget consistent with the national interest.”*

Most of the money, $1.17 billion, goes for military assistance. Three-fourths of that amount is earmarked for the eleven countries that border the Communist bloc in “the great arc from Greece to Korea”: Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Laos, South Viet Nam, Formosa, the Philippines, and South Korea. An additional $369 million in “supporting assistance” is to be allocated to help maintain economic stability in the countries that the U.S. is aiding militarily; of that amount, 88% would go to South Viet Nam, Laos, Korea and Jordan. More than $500 million of the military and supporting assistance would be spent “to meet the frontal attack in Viet Nam and Laos,” but President Johnson also asked for stand-by authorization for additional money for Viet Nam “only in case we should need more funds to protect our interests there.”

Reduced are requests for funds for long-term development loans. Johnson wants $780 million for that purpose, pledged that the money would be “concentrated where it will contribute to lasting progress.” About $507 million would go to the seven countries that have best helped themselves under U.S. aid and have avoided expenditures on “unnecessary armaments and foreign adventures”: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Brazil and Chile. To underwrite loans and grants for the Alliance for Progress, Johnson asked for $580 million this year—$70 million more than Congress appropriated in 1964. To justify the increase, the President cited convincing statistics to show that the “governments and people of Latin America are accepting increasing responsibility for their own development” thanks to the Alianza’s encouragement.

Among more or less routine items asked for: $210 million for technical cooperation, $50 million in contingency funds, $155 million for contributions to international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Development Association and the Inter-American Bank. The President also proposed a plan to stimulate private investment in emerging nations: a tax credit for U.S. companies equal to 30% of their investment in those countries. Congress turned that idea down last year, but the prospects for passage now are brighter.

The immigration proposals, similar to those recommended in 1963 by John Kennedy, constitute a drastic overhaul of an anachronistic, 40-year-old law. One key provision would wipe out the “Asia-Pacific triangle” arrangement that effectively bars all but a smattering of Oriental immigrants to the U.S. This, and other liberalization of the law, would be accomplished by ending the present national quota system, which, said the President, is “incompatible with our basic American tradition” and “does incalculable harm.”

The national quotas would be reduced over a five-year period at the rate of 20% each year. Building, meanwhile, would be a quota reserve pool, available to applicants from any nation. Visas would be allotted to the pool on a preferential sequence based on the immigrant’s skills and his family relationship with U.S. residents. First preference and half the visas would be reserved for those whose skills are “especially advantageous” to the U.S. The second preference and 30% of the visas would be for unmarried children, over 21, of U.S. citizens. The third preference and the remaining 20% would be granted to spouses and unmarried children of aliens living permanently in the U.S. Any unused visas would be for other relatives of U.S. residents and for workers with “lesser skills.” Parents of U.S. citizens and natives of recently independent Western Hemisphere nations would be given immediate nonquota status.

The measure would authorize an increase of about 7,000 immigrants a year, but the total annual immigration to the U.S. would probably increase from the 271,300 people admitted last year to about 350,000, largely because of full utilization of quotas that now are never met. All these changes, said the President, would amount to a program that “both serves the national interest and continues our traditional ideals. No move could more effectively reaffirm our fundamental belief that a man is to be judged—and judged exclusively—on his worth as a human being.”

* Like all foreign aid bills, it does not account for various forms of assistance such as Food for Peace, the Peace Corps and commercial, Government-guaranteed loans, which will amount to another estimated $3 billion.