Speech #540121913

If I shall not have furnished the information before I have concluded. I shall be very glad to answer any question which the Senator may propound. What is known as the House bill provided for an amendment of the immigration laws of the United States heretofore enacted by adding to the class of aliens to be excluded from admission to the United States all persons between 16 and 60 years of age who can not both read and write the English language or some other language. I will advert to that part of the report by way of illustration of the point which I shall proceed to make. Later. in February. 1896. the Senate passed an immigration bill. substituting the Senate bill for the House bill to which I have just adverted. In the Senate bill there was a provision. in respect to the class of aliens to be excluded. providing that all persons over 14 years of age who can not read and write the language of their native country or some other language" should be substituted for the provision of the House bill making the limit of age 16 years. There was a further provision in the Senate bill which was substituted for the House bill for the purpose of testing the ability of immigrants to read and write. There was no such test of illiteracy in the House bill. In the Senate bill was the first time in the history of the amending of the immigration laws that the Senate provided a test of illiteracy for the qualification of alien immigrants. That illiteracy test. as I have just suggested. with reference to testing the ability of each immigrant. was as follows: The inspection officers shall be furnished with copies of the Constitution of the United States. printed on numbered uniform pasteboard slips. each containing five lines of said Constitution printed in the various languages of the immigrants in double small pica type. Then followed a further provision with reference to the keeping of boxes so as to conceal from view the slips to be read by the immigrant. The Senate bill was amended by striking out the 14year limit and applying 16 years as the limit. There was added an amendment. offered by the Senator from Alabama . that refugees from Cuba should be admitted into the United States without being subjected to the illiteracy test to which other alien immigrants were to be subjected. That bill was passed by the Senate. Upon the passage of that bill a conference was asked by the Senator from Massachusetts and the conferees on the part of the.