If the Senator from Delaware will now permit me. in this very connection I have before me the decision of Justice Miller in the headtax cases referred to by the Senator from Wisconsin. He alluded to it as a decision involving the interstatecommerce clause of the Constitution. It was. in fact. a decision based upon the exclusive power of Congress to regulate immigration. What is known as the headtax statute imposed a dollar tax upon every foreigner over a certain age coming into any port of the United States. and it was attacked upon the ground that it was unconstitutional. The money to be raised from that tax went into a fund to provide for indigent and diseased persons who came over as immigrants and were unfortunate upon shipboard or immediately after landing in this country.
Keywords matched
immigrants immigration