President. the spirit of this bill. in its narrow selfishnessi is that of the man who having directly or through his ancestors e~caped from the hardships. cruelties. and tyrannies of other lands. now stands upon this libertylighted shore and pnshes back into the hopeless night of despotism those who are now seeking to escape. Will this bill admit a single Jew? Under a strict construction not one of them will be exempted from the literacy test. The Jew within the pale. straining his eager eyes toward this land. has two causes for immigration. one is to escape the intolerable persecution he has suffered on account of his race and religion. the other an infinite longing to stand upon free soil and as a free man to live to make for his family a home where love and peace shall abide. Under this bill that man. if he was denied the opportunity to learn to read. must be excluded. because his motive in coming here is not solely and only for the purpose of escaping religious persecution. Because he loves liberty he must be returned to slavery. That word " solely" was placed in this bill for the purpose of emasculating the exemptions. Our traditional policy has been to grant sanctuary to all seeking refuge from political or religious persecution. We now propose to absolutely exclude the refugee from political tyranny and to exclude those seeking to escape religious persecution if they come to our shores because they also love our free institutions. I have been toldI do not claim that what I have learned is binding upon anyonethat the reason to some extent urgedI do not say in the committee of conferencefor striking out the clause that prohibited Africans from coming to this country was because if that provision were left in the bill a twothirds vote could not be obtained to override a veto of the President. I do not know what the President will do with this bill.
Keywords matched
immigration literacy test refugee