Speech #560022022

But in regard to the enforcement of the law restricting immigration from China and restricting laborcontract immigration from Japan and India or Australia or anywhere else. ought there not to be in the islands of Hawaii a jurisdiction that has unquestionable power to deal with that question? Now. the jurisdiction that is conferred in this bill or the jurisdiction that was conferred in the statute giving the power to .the supreme court of the Territory is not adequate to these two questions to which I have j ust advertedthe restraint and the control of immigration from China. which is prohibited. and all contractlabor immigration from Japan or any other country. The difficulty we have had in restricting Chinese immigration is that it has scattered itself along the whole coast of the United States and even around to north of the British boundary and perhaps south of the boundary with M exico. and the persons who are prohibited from coming in here from China have percolated through these boundary lines. and we have had to exercise a good deal of vigilance and to employ a n~umber of officers in order to check and prevent an influx of Chinese. and the courts have had to exercise a very earnest powerI was about to say arbitrary power. and it would be arbitrary but for the statute in the control of this immigration. Now. sir. can we have a better protection against these two evilsfor they are so declared by the national lawthan to have at Hawaii. a point where all these ships touch. a district court of the United States fully empowered by our statutes to deal with this question. and if we have a district court. is it not one that naturally and necessarily is independent of all local influences in Hawaii which might be in favor of the admission of Chinese immigration for the sake of its labor and of laborcontract immigration from Japan? Where is there a point in the United States where the power of the district court would be more available or �more useful or more necessary than in Hawaii for this very purpose?� Then we wilt take up the importation of diseases from the Orient. that great pesthouse. that bed of generation of all the great dreads that ever visit humanitythe bubonic plague. cholera. the black plague. or whatever it is. In the approach of ships �to the United States there ought to be an establishment of quarantine in Hawaii subject to the power and control of a Federal court. so that the authority of the United States bight there be felt. far out from the land. and the importation of diseases might be stopped at that favorite possession.