Speech #540081411

It is esthated that from 50.000 to 100.000 human beings every year leave their homes and families in foreign countries and come to the United States with no intention of making this country their permanent home. and engage in competition with our laboring men during the most active business periods and building seasons in all the avenues of labor. and at the end of the season or prosperous period return to their foreign homes and there spend with their families the fruits of American labor. Mr. Speaker. the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a commission to investigateand report what changes were deemed necessgry in the rules and regulations in force with reference to immigrants. and I find on page 40 of that report the following recommendation: Your commissioners would respectfully suggest that Congress should by appropriate legislation enact laws for the followiurposes: 1. A law regulating immigration into the United tatusfrom contiguous foreign countries by water or laud carriage. which will protect our workmen from the importation of transient cheap labor across the frontier. Provision should also be made therein to exclude aliens coming year after year to perform labor in the United States with no intentiou to settle therein. I desire to say that in my judgment the present administration of the Immigration Bureau is the one bright star in the unfortunate Cleveland Administration. It stands out as the one department of this Governent seeking earnestly and faithfully to execute the laws with reference to immigration. and I want to congratulate my Democratic friends that they have. in this department at least. worthy and efficient men. Now. Mr. Speaker. for the information of members of this House I will ask the Clerk to read two letters. one of them addressed to the ComnmissionerGeneral from his subordinate officer at Sault Ste. Marie and the other from the inspector at Boston. with reference to the very subject I am discussing. I want to say that every inspector of immigration in the United States has appealed to the CommissionerGeneral for a correction of this evil.