Speech #640218118

But I simply rose to emphasize what has been in my heart here for a long time. that every bill we have passed has been passed upon the false theory that because a child was fortunate enough to be educated in his youth he would therefore make a better citizen than the unfortunate one whose responsibilities perhaps kept him from the privileges of education. and I rose to emphasize our debt of gratitude to aliens. It is not for us to close our doors against good people. no matter where they come from. If they are bad people they ought not to be admitted even if they can pass the literacy test. and if they are good people they ought to be admitted even though they can not pass the literacy test. I think the test proposed is not the best test. that character is the best test. and that we have the machinery of government present In every part of the world. where we may inquire firstdland into the life and the character and the antecedents. if you please. of those who apply for admission into the United States. I have been very much interested in what the Senator from North Dakota said. and he always says what is sensible. and he says It fearlessly and fairly. I do not think that this bill meets the situation we are aiming at. I believe that we have let In a great many people who should have been kept out. I believe our laws of naturalization have been too weak. It is not fair to take classes of people who have not made good citizens at all before they have been here five years and give them a place alongside the Senator from Minnesota . who fought as a soldier for four years that our Republic might last. while his son and my son. educated In American public schools. reared amidst our institutions. rocked by patriotic mothers. are obliged to wait 21 years before they have the right to eiercise the sovereign right of citizenship. Yet within five years we take in strangers who do not furnish credentials of good citizen. ship abroad. who are mere birds of passage. who linger here because they find this soil and this Government congenial to their exploitation. and we hastily permit them to exercise all the rightsof citizenship In this Republic. : I believe that these privileges are conferred often inappropriately.