John Major Quotes
I will turn directly to the Asylum Bill later.
Major, John. Speech to the House of Commons. Hansard, 1992.
Actually, Queen Elisabeth II, at that time the Queen of England, was very sophisticated about the policies of the nation. Chomsky’s point was not that the Queen was ignorant; it was that her role is ceremonial and it is not critical or even material that the monarch in a Constitutional Democracy understands or approves of the government program that is being presented.
Professor Neustadt had served on the staff of President Harry S Truman so he had a practical perspective from which he spoke in addition to his scholarship.
The Social Security law, most American’s favorite government program, had just been passed that year, and like the Affordable Health Care Act in the Obama administration, the Republicans were rabidly opposed to the program, and there was none of the collaboration with an objective to perfect and improve the legislative language. And like “Obama Care” and most very large new government initiatives, there were many problems that became clear once the program was started. Amazingly President Roosevelt was the first to tell the public and the press that the Social Security program will have many problems, but what does not work can be replaced by something else and the program would be improved. This was part of FDR’s basic approach to the Presidency. (See {631419}.) No politician in modern times would be able to say that or anything like it, and Mrs. Roosevelt’s quotation here, which she wrote for the entire country to see, most politicians and political scientists would agree that she was exactly right about new legislative initiative.
The issue of admission of relatives of citizens had, in the 20th century, become controversial as some political forces worked to restrict immigration. The result of politicizing this issue was that the relatives who would receive immigration priorities would change every time Congress legislated about anything involving immigration and asylum. Immigrants from some countries could have their aunts and uncles get priority while other countries it was only siblings, children and parents. And still others would be children only. There was also racial and ethnic discrimination in that nations with white populations received a broader right to have relatives immigrate than non-white.
Sir John Major KG CH is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. Major served in the Thatcher government from 1987 to 1990 as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary, and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001.
