Speech #620285419

Speaker. I desire to call to the attention of the House one of the provisions included by the conferees in this bill. It provides for the exclusion of a class of aliens not heretofore excluded under our laws by adding the following to the excluded classes: Pcrsons who can not become eligible under existing law to become citizens of the United States by naturalization unless otherwise provided for by existing agreements as to passpoits. or by treaties. conventions. or agreements that may hereafter be entered into. The provision next foregoing. however. shall not apply to persons of the following status or occupations: Government officers. ministers or religious teachers. missionaries. lawyers. physicians. chemists. engineers. teachers. students. authors. editors. journalists. merchants. hankers. and travelers for curiosity or pleasure. nor to their legal wives or their children under 16 years ol! age who shall accompany them or wlo subsequently may apply for admission to the United States. but such persons or their legal wives or foreignborn children who fail to maintain in the United States a status or occupation placing them within the excepted classes shall be deemed to be in the United States contrary to law. and shall be subject to deportation as provided in section 19 of this act. Some of the exceptions of this provision I do not approve. I wish they were not in the bill. I doubt the wisdom of substituting a sort of gentlemens agreement between nations for tile provisions of legislative enactment. especially ill : matter so vital as ilmmigration. But I do enthusiastically indorse tihe principle which by the provision above quoted is incorporated into the immigration law. Any people who :re not to be fully assimilated and included in the whole hody of our citizenship. with all tle rights and duties incident thereto should be rigidly excluded fromt our shores. This rule should be made aI fiudamental principle of our immigratiot laws. to be strictly adhered to at all tinies and under all circumstances. To admit to this country any considerable number of immigrants frot a country the inhabitants of which we do not admit to citizenship utder our laws is to import another race lroblem similar to the onie we now have in the South. I believe that no man ol tills floor would like to see that problem duplicated in tite West. Four years ago I introduced a bill embodying the principle above referred to. and have been advocating it ever since. I am much gratified that the conferees on the part of the House have incorporated this provision in their report. For mamy years I[ have advocaled the extension of the ChineseexcIusioln act so as to exclude all Asiatic laborers. I still believe that some positive legislative enactment which woul ef.ectually exclude them would bie better than the gentlemins agreement between this country and Japan. and I still hope to see such alt act take the place of that agreement. I will admit. however. that so far this agrcement has worked fairly well.