Speech #570092831

I do not apprehend that there would be any difficulty. It is not that I fear the service is going to stop. I have not any doubt that we shall appropriate this year out of the Treasury. paid by the people of the United States. $500.000 to build a hospital at Ellis Island. $90.000 to give them a ferryboat. and $40.000 to give them a tugboat. all of which are absolutely necessary at that great port. and that we shall spend some money to make at Boston a place where we can absolutely shelter immigrants. which does not exist today. but I do think it is a matter of justice that those people who come in and get so much should pay something toward their own expenses. I am not so tender about taxing the immigrant. I think he can afford to pay something when he comes into this country. and I can not see why the alien should be relieved and the citizens of the country who carry the whole burden should also have the burden of providing for him. It is not that I fear that we shall not get the money for the immigration service. It is because I believe the money ought to be got in the proper way. along the general line of policy which the Government has always pursued hitherto in all its immigration legislation. Mr. President. in regard to the matter of which the Senator from New Hampshire spoke. about immigrants coming over the border from Canada. I should be the last to wish to put any obstruction or any difficulties in the way of those transportation companies. Those great companies are of the utmost importance. and their business is of the utmost importance. not only to my State. but to New England. for all our interests there are bound up together. but I do think it is all wrong that immigrants rejected at the port of New York should be enabled to come around through Canada and slip in over the border there. There is hot the slightest desire on the part of any of the committeeand I am sure the Senator from New Hampshire realizes thatto put burdens or annoyances in the way of thetransportation companies. All we desire to do is to shut out at the borders the same class of people that everybody agrees it is well to shut out at the port of New York.