Speech #520113732

Fire Island is but a short distance from the coast. But that is foreign to the question entirely. I had hoped that something would be done with respect to the regulation of immigration. We are receiving today immigrants from all over the world. very largely through the agency of the steamship companies. who have their agencies in every country in Europe soliciting patronage. They have provided facilities on their ships for steerage passengers. They want to fill up the steerage apartments at all times. and they secure passengers by whatever means it may be necessary for them to take. I have somewhere heard it stated. and I believe it to be true. that even the pauper houses and the prisons in some of the countries of. Europe have been emptied out. and there is a suspicion that even the governments themselves have been engaged in assisting this class of people to emigrate to the United States in order that they might be got rid of permanently. Here are diseased people. infirm people. and all that class of people are now invited to come here andbecome aburden upon our Government. paupers and criminals as well. No one would go further than I to assist immigration from foreign countries to this country. provided the immigranfs were of that class who ought to be received in the United States. but if they are simply to be transferred from one country to another. to fill our prisons. our poorhouses. and reformatory institutions. then I think there should be some regulation with respect to the character of people we should admit. All these things should be taken into consideration and be regulated by rigid laws. The simple fact of suspending for a single year all immigration means what? It means to keep out thousands and tens of thousands of worthy and desirable immigrants whom we might want to come to our country. The effect of itwill be that at the expiration of that time we shall have made no progress whatever. we shall have passed no law to regulate the subject. We find in this bill of the Senator from Tennessee a simple provision that immigrants shall be examined upon the other side for contagious or infectious diseases. and for nothing else. That is all the purpose this legislation contemplates. I wanted to begin at this session of Congress the preparation of a bill turning over at least the great immigration quarantine station at the port of New York to the Federal authorities. and let the Federal authorities prepare suitable facilities for quarantining passengers when they are found to come from an infected port or in an infected ship. That is the true policy. The idea of trying to work the quarantine stations of this country. the large ones particularly. by the joint authority of Federal and State superintendence is something that can not be done.