Speech #530025330

We know that they are alibns. and that the right to expel them is a part of the right to exclude them originally. The decisions of the courts have settled that question beyond all controversy. These men being here in the country. being aliens. never having taken measures to secure naturalization. never having taken measures to identify themselves with us in any way other than to compete with our labor and to largely injure the morals of the country. and to take with them from the country. whenever they acquire it. the earnings which they have made sufficient to live in comparative wealth in their own landthese people inflicting this injury upon us can be excluded from the country or deported from the country under the decisions of the courts without any judicial proceedings whatever. We can eliminate them from. the country. and our doing so is in the exercise of the political power. the exercise of a power to which all treaties and all international contracts are subject. involving that inalienable right in the nation to act for its own selfdefense. a power which can not be parted with either by treaty or contract any more than we can grant away the legislative power. a power inherent and inalienable and subject to which every treaty is made. so that when the time comes that the conditions of the treaty are found to be injurious or hurtful to those who entered into it. that treaty is ipso facto void. if the evil be so great that. in justice to its own people. it is necessary that either contracting power shall be released from the obligation into which it has entered. This proceeding.then.I maintain. is not a judicial proceeding at all. but a political proceeding.