Speech #600149660

I shall be very glad to give it to my colleague. When we passed the immigration act in 1907. we added a new provision that hereafter there should be statistics collected of the outgoing aliens. so as to show at the end of the year what was the net increase or decrease of the alien population. These statistics are valuable. But between Qanada and the United States there is a constant daily passage of Canadians. It is of no value to collect those statistics. We expressly exempted railroads crossing the border between Canada and the United States from the operation of the law. because the statistics would not only be valueless but misleading. but we neglected to exempt in that act that steamship company which runs from Boston to a port somewhere in Canada. and in so far as statistics are collected of the daily passage of aliens between the two countries they are not only valueless but misleading. and this bill corrects that defect.