I have directed the Departments of State and Justice and Health, Education, and Welfare to immediately make all the necessary arrangements to permit those in Cuba who seek freedom to make an orderly entry into the United States of America.

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from.

The lesson of our times is sharp and clear in this movement of people from one land to another.

So it is in that spirit that I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it.

The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied.

I am asking the Department of State to seek through the Swiss Government immediately the agreement of the Cuban Government in a request to the President of the International Red Cross Committee.

Our next concern is with those who are imprisoned for political reasons.

This sort of carelessness and selfishness simply ought to be stopped; and more, it just must be reversed.

I am pleased with this opportunity for the United States to participate with Japan in the joint solution of health problems which will have worldwide benefits.

There is no excuse for communities to use other people's rivers as a dump for their raw sewage.

There is no excuse for a river flowing red with blood from slaughterhouses.

Today, we begin to be masters of our environment.

I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby extend through the year 1966 the period during which all persons are specially invited to see the United States, visit our historic shrines, our natural wonders…

Today, we proclaim our refusal to be strangled by the wastes of civilization.

No one has a right to use America's rivers and America's waterways that belong to all the people as a sewer.

I believe that with your help and your continued cooperation, water pollution is doomed in this century.

But we must act, and act swiftly.

The ultimate victory of reclaiming this portion of our national heritage really rests in the hands of all the people of America, not just the Government here in Washington.