Speech #590039245

We might have excluded them under the Dillingham bill. There were 47 imbeciles admitted at the same port. but what does all that amount to? We can exclude a few thousand by selective measures. but if we really want restrictive measures and seriously desire to cut down our immigration we have got a fight on our hands. and it is none too soon to begin. We shall be fought at every stage. The steamship companies and the large transportation lines might put up a mock battle against some of these unimportant selective bills. with a view to keepIng us as long as possible at the soup before we get at the meat. but if we try to get a real restrictive measure through Congress we shall have every transportation line and every steamship line trying to stop us. and it will not be any sham battle. I for one would rather see a real restrictive bill reported to this House and beaten than pass half a dozen of those little. unimportant selective bills. which merely tend to raise the quallflcatlons of a few thousand people. You will find plenty of people to allege that the trouble is not with our immigration laws. but with their enforcement. That is a very easy thing to say. Anyone who has not been as much at Ellis Island as has my friend the gentleman from New York and as .1 have been might suppose that there was something in the statement There is nothing in It at all. however. I take pleasure In saying that the officers of our MarineHospital Service who examine the immigrants physically and the inspectors of our Immigration Bureau who do the rest enforce the laws as well as they can be enforced. Their failure to enforce the law arises from the nature of the case. They fall down not on the physical side. but owing to the impossibility of executing our contractlabor law and our law against the admission of people likely to become a public charge.