Speech #590091375

Mr. President. I introduced a bill on the 8th of last January to amend the existing law on the subject of the immigration of aliens into the United States. Important provisions of my bill have been incorporated in the bill now under consideration. I am also a member of the Committee on Immigration. and I helped to prepare the pending bill. and I am in favor of its passage. There is no problem confronting the people of the United States which deserves more earnest attention and careful consideration than the immigration problem. It involves questions which not only reach the homes and the farms and the industries of our country. but also the welfare of the people and the degeneracy or elevation of the human race in our country. I admire the sentiment that in this free country we should welcome the people of the world. and that America should be the home of the libertyloving and downtrodden and oppressed of all nations. but I should like to add also the plain but expressive words that America should be the home of the worthy. and that the undesirable immigrants should be kept out and the desirable immigrants should be welcomed. If the immigrants coming to our country are beginning to be a menace to American homes and American industries and American civilization. should we not do all that can .be done to separate the worthy from the unworthykeep up the best standards and do justice to the desirable immigrants and do our duty to our home people? Should we not by legislation exclude the objectionable element and encourage the immi: grants we want. who come here to stay. and who are healthy and resolute and industrious. and who appreciate American institutions? The President of the United States very appropriately said in his .last annual message to Congress: The prime need Is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens. The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable Immigrants should be strengthened. * * * What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man. In my judgment. with this end in view. we shall have to prepare through our own agents a far more rigid inspection in the countries from which the immigrants come. It will be a great deal better to have fewer immigrants. but all of the right kind. than a great number of immigrants. many of whom are necessarily of the wrong kind. As far as possible we wish to limit the immigration to this country to persons who propose to become citizens of this country. and we can well afford to Insist upon adequate scrutiny of the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship. Mr. President. a review of immigration statistics and reports discloses an increase in the number of foreigners annually coming to our country which is startling. In the year ending June 30. 1905. there came to the United States 1.026.000 alien immigrants. being a greater number of immigrants than came to our country during the one hundred and sixtynine years of our colonial life which intervened between the first landing at Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence. and a greater number than came to the United States from 1800 to The statistics of immigration which are available show that since 1820 22.931.983 aliens came to the United States. In the year 1820 8.385 immigrants came to the United States. In 1860. forty years later. they numbered 133.143. The number of alien immigrants who came to the United States in 1900 was 448.000. In the year 1905. only five years later. the number of immigrants who came to the United States had more than doubled. At the rate they are now coming they would equal the population of Kentucky in two years. and equal the combined population of Delaware. Nevada.