I am happy to report substantial progress in the flow of immigrants under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953; however, I again request this Congress to approve without further delay the urgently needed amendments to that act which I submitted in the last Session.  Because of the high prosperity in Germany and Austria, the number of immigrants from those countries will be reduced.  This will make available thousands of unfilled openings which I recommend be distributed to Greece and Italy and to escapees from behind the Iron Curtain.

Once again I ask the Congress to join with me in demonstrating our belief in the right of suffrage.  I renew my request that the principle of self-government be extended and the right of suffrage granted to the citizens of the District of Columbia.

To conclude:  the vista before us is bright.  The march of science, the expanding economy, the advance in collective security toward a just peace—­in this threefold movement our people are creating new standards by which the future of the Republic may be judged.

Progress, however, will be realized only as it is more than matched by a continuing growth in the spiritual strength of the nation.  Our dedication to moral values must be complete in our dealings abroad and in our relationships among ourselves.  We have single-minded devotion to the common good of America.  Never must we forget that this means the well-being, the prosperity, the security of all Americans in every walk of life.

To the attainment of these objectives, I pledge full energies of the Administration, as in the Session ahead, it works on a program for submission to you, the Congress of the United States.

***

State of the Union Address
Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 10, 1957

To the Congress of the United States: 

I appear before the Congress today to report on the State of the Union and the relationships of the Union to the other nations of the world.  I come here, firmly convinced that at no time in the history of the Republic have circumstances more emphatically underscored the need, in all echelons of government, for vision and wisdom and resolution.

You meet in a season of stress that is testing the fitness of political systems and the validity of political philosophies.  Each stress stems in part from causes peculiar to itself.  But every stress is a reflection of a universal phenomenon.

In the world today, the surging and understandable tide of nationalism is marked by widespread revulsion and revolt against tyranny, injustice, inequality and poverty.  As individuals, joined in a common hunger for freedom, men and women and even children pit their spirit against guns and tanks.  On a larger scale, in an ever more persistent search for the self-respect of authentic sovereignty and the economic base on which national independence must rest, peoples sever old ties; seek new alliances; experiment—­sometimes dangerously—­in their struggle to satisfy these human aspirations.