Mr. President. I think it was a week ago today that the junior Senator from Missouri in speaking on the pending question made a most elaborate. carefully prepared. and eloquent address upon the subject of alien immigration. My purpose in what I have to say today is to confine myself to that phase of the pending question. The President in his message. sent to Congress January 28. refusing his approval of House bill 6060. "An act to regulate the immigration of aliens to and the residence of aliens In the United States." said: .The literacy test and the .tests and restrictions which accompany it constitute an even more radical change in the policy of the Nation. Hitherto we have generously kept our dors open toall who wrc not unfitted by- reason of disease or incapacity. for selfsupport or such personal records and antecedents as were likely to make them a menace to our peace and order or to the wholesome and essential relationships of life. He then proceeds: In this bill it is proposed to turn away from tests of character and of. quality and impose tests which exclude and restrict. for the new tests here embodied are not tests of quality or of character or of personal fitness. but tests of opportunity. Those who come seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one of the chief of the opportunities they seek. the opportunity of education. The cbject of such provisions Is restriction. not selection. Then the President proceeds to say: If the people of this country have made up their minds to limit the number of immigrants by arbitrary tests and so reverse the policy of all the generations of Americans that have gone before them. It Is their right to do so. I am their servant and have no license to stand In their way.
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immigrants immigration literacy test