# Harry S. Truman — "utterly unworthy of our traditions and our ideals" > [!quote] "The idea behind this discriminatory policy 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." > — Harry S. Truman, Veto Message on the Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act), June 25, 1952 ## Context Truman vetoed the McCarran-Walter Act because it preserved the 1924 national-origins quota system, which allotted the overwhelming majority of immigration slots to Northern and Western Europe while throttling Southern and Eastern Europe and most of Asia. Congress overrode the veto within two days. Truman's objection was not procedural but moral: he named the quota system's premise — an ethnic hierarchy of "better" Americans — and rejected it outright. ## Why this matters The receipt that anchors the *anti-discrimination* strand of the consensus. Truman attacks the national-origins regime directly as a contradiction of "the great political doctrine of the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal.'" His framing — that ranking citizens by ancestral nationality is "unworthy of our traditions" — became the official rationale that [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] would act on thirteen years later in abolishing the quotas. It is also the clearest pre-history of the modern fight: the very hierarchy Truman denounced is the one [[Great Replacement Theory]] seeks to restore. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Harry S. Truman Library, Veto of Bill To Revise the Laws Relating to Immigration, Naturalization, and Nationality, June 25, 1952](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/182/veto-bill-revise-laws-relating-immigration-naturalization-and-nationality); [full veto message PDF](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/Immigration_TrumanVeto.pdf). - **Status:** Verbatim from the official veto message. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Lyndon B. Johnson - nourished by so many cultures]] — LBJ acts on Truman's argument, abolishing the quota system at the Statue of Liberty in 1965. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Nation of Immigrants]].