Speech #540129834

If the Senator from New Hampshire will do me justice. lie will recollect that it was not the Senator from Maryland. but the Senator from New York . who objected to section 9. It was the section referred to by the Senator from New York as presenting to his view of the case an additional objection in reference to what had been urged as to other sections by the Senator from Maryland and other Senators. 1 will proceed to reiterate a suggestion before made that the conferees have not discharged the obligations devolved upon them in the instructions with which they were invested or charged as a part of their duty. The admission of the wife. it is true. is provided for. but. with a degree of persistency which I will not charge as woefully ignorant or willfully persistent. they have undertaken to draw a distinction between " immigrants" in the bill and the residents " before this legislation had been sought. This construction which I am compelled to put upon the immigration bill as it comes from the conference committee does gross injustice to a large class of our bona fide residents aid makes a discrimination against them which is unjust and unAmerican. if not clearlv unconstitutional. According to the text of the first section of this bill. a resident of this country can not. in my judgment. send for his illiterate wife. parents. or grandparents. regardless of whether he himself can read or write. As there is no provision in section 2 providing the pleasihg machinery of a civilservice examination for a resident. but only for the unfortunate immigrant. how can a resident have his family with him? Now.if this is not the intent of the bill as it comes from the conference. what other or more liberal construction can be placed upon those words of doubtf ul import. "similarly qualified and capable?" Why should any resident American be obnoxious to the provisions of an immigration bill? Even a resident who may have either declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States or taken out full papers of naturalization comes within the unfriendly provisions of this measure as reported from the conference. It is true that a wife or minor child unable to read and write .may accompany the immigrant or be sent for and come to join the husband or parent of the immigrant referred to. "similarly qualified and capable." but it excludes from the provisions of this exemption of the illiteracy feature of the bill the wife of a "resident" of the United States who has been here one month or more before the passage of this actif the measure should become a lawwhile the "immigrant" may bring his wife or send for her after he gets here. No immigrant. even if he be a citizen for years. can have his old illiterate father and mother come to this country. because he has not been examined. The bill says that the former may be admitted. if they belong to a qualified immigrant over 21 years. in other words. an immigrant can bring his parents in. if he has passed the examination. but all those who came before the enactment of the Lodge law can not have that privilege. because they have not qualified. This is a discrimination against immigrants who are already in this country. Those who have come to this country before this time. who have been waiting anxiously for the time to come when by their careful savings and their pinching to save here and there they could send for. when they had money enough. the illiterate wife and child whom they had left behind and beyond the seas. are excluded. Was it the sense of the Senate.