No. There are no exact statistics. but we have the right to draw the inference that being in the steerage and going back they were mainly aliens. and everybody concedes that to be the fact. Then. besides that. there were in that million 175.000 peoplealienswho had been in this country before. so that instead of adding a million to our population the immigration of 1905 added somewhere between six and seven hundred thousand. in round numbers. As to the head tax. the present head tax is $2. and if the amendment of the gentleman from Minnesota is adopted it will remain at that figure. What has that done up to date? It has paid every dollar of expense of the Immigration Service. It has built every building that is used for the Immigration Service in the country. it has built every vessel that is used in the Immigration Service. We have appropriated this year in the sundry civil bill. to be paid out of that fund. $500.000 for the exclusion of the Chinese. All of those things I have enumerated have been paid for out of the $2 head tax. Yet on the 31st of December. 1905. there was a surplus in this fund of $2.400.000. Mr. Chairman. this proposition to add $3 to this head tax is just like taking pennies from a dead mans eyes. It is making these poor people pay a tax for the benefit of the United States Treasury.
Keywords matched
steerage head tax immigration Immigration