Speech #620269544

I could multiply inrtances in this and other sections of the faulty construction and bad English of this test framed on the idea that the people desired In this country are experts in language. As to collisions with existing laws and conditions I note. among other things. that it applies to the Canal Zone. The immigration law excepts the Canal Zone. It applies to the Philippines and provides for the enforcement of the act by Immigrant inspectors. there are no !imigrant inspectors in the Philippines. It applies to the ambassadors. ministers. and other officials of foreign Governments. their suites. families. and guests. the immigration law excepts these from all other tests. but if a nember of the household or a servant of a foreign minister can not read back he goes. It does not recognize that Canadians and Mexicans cross our border daily. If this bill passes each Mexican or Canadian coming into the United States will have to read his daily slip as regularly as ha eats his daily breakfast. and a Canadian lady coming in a sleeper must be waked up in the middle of the night and made to read her " not less than 30 nor more than 40 words." Rusia is the only country that now does anything as brutal as that. There are many other defects of this character in the bill. chiefly they come from trying to pass the literacy test as a separate act. thus taking it away from the limitations. exemptions. and provisos which 20 years of experience has engrafted on the immigration law. The bill is unworkable. in practice. The immigration law provides that a steamer which does not comply with that law can not clear. but there is no such provision in this act except as to deported persons. Examinations must be o shipboard because the provisions of the immigration law concerning temporary landing are not a part of this act. Immigrants speak altogether more than 45 different languages. and as no two on the same ship can read froe the same slip ships which bring in 2.000 aliens will require 90.000 slips. although they will use but 2.000. .Imagine inspectors going out into the middle of the harpor with those 90.000 slips as a part of their equipment to steamers which the law does not compel to receive them for the purpose of such an examination. These criticisms are not captious: not one of them would have applied to section. 38 of the Gardner bill of 1906 : that test was equally bad in principle. but its English was good . it did not collide with other provisions of the immigration law. and being made a part of the immigration law it would have been workable. The Burnett bill is much the least desirable in form and draftsmanship of any of the literacy tests which have been considered in the House during the past eight years. Very truly. yours. WILLIAM S. lIlNNET.