Speech #590091241

I would do everything possible. Mr. President. to protect the immigrant who has been badly treated by a transportation company. as doubtless very many of them have been. but the operation of the present law has been so good that with the addition of certain provisions in this bill. to which I will refer later. I think we can get along without. perhaps. enacting a measure as drastic as that which has been suggested by the Senator from South Carolina . although I desire to say that I am in perfect sympathy with him in the object which he wishes to accomplish. Referring again to the effectiveness of medical examinations by steamship companies at foreign ports. I want to say that I was in doubt concerning the real significance of the statement that 5.070 intended immigrants had been turned back at ports of embarkation or at the socalled control stations along the border between Russia and western Europe. It occurred to me that this " turning back" of intended immigrants as reported by the steamship companies to United States officials. was in fact simply a detention of diseased persons that they might be given medical treatment and prepared for a fraudulent entry into the United States at a later date. At my suggestion the list of those 5.070 aliens who were denied the privilege of embarkation was compared with subsequent manifests of incoming aliens with the purpose of ascertaining whether many of them came later. and Commissioner Watchorn gives me the rather surprising information that only 19 names appearing on that list have subsequently appeared on manifests of aliens coming to Ellis Island. and these were mostly marked "temporarily detained for observation." This satisfies me that the steamship companies are acting in good faith in the work which they are doing. Without this fine. I doubt if a single one of these persons would have been rejected at the port of embarkation. They would. in all probability. have been brought to our immigrant stations. examined. and deported. I am also informed by Mr. Watchorn that of all the cases certified to be loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases among arrivals at Ellis Island in 1905 only 149 were such as could have been detected at the time of embarkation. that is. out of those whom we deported as so diseased. only 149. in the judgment of the immigration officials. could have been detected had they been examined by our own surgeons on the other side of the water. This. I think. is strong evidence of the effectiveness of the law in compelling steamship companies to cooperate with us in our effort to exclude diseased classes.