Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee. this bill is the result of our experience during the war with our immigration laws and our immigration policy. It has shown up in at least one respect one of the great loopholes that we have in our policy in dealing with immigration. At the last session of the last Congress considerable agitation was on for the passage of legislation by Congress that would have excluded all immigrants from all countries throughout the world for a period of four years. I was in favor of that. It might be an extreme policy. but I believe our experienceduring the war was such that we at least ought to civilize and Americanize those immigrants that we allow to come within our borders. I think that anybody who will take the trouble to go to Ellis Island or to the immigration station at Boston or at Baltimore or at Philadelphia. or any of our other immigration stations along the Atlantic coast. especially where the immigration comes from Europe. will see readily that it is almost a human impossibility for the immigration inspectors to carefully scrutinize and examine the horde of immigrants that come into this courttryrin times of peace. In the year prior to the war. ending June 30. 1914. there were about 1.114.000 immigrants who entered the gates of the United States during a serious period of industrial depression. Several hundred thousand of them. perhaps. went back to Europe. leaving among us threequarters of a million of immigrants during that year. It was impossible to scrutinize the characteristics and ascertain the feelings of those men and women who sought admission. I voted for the Burnett immigration bill in this House twice. I voted for the illiteracy test. I voted twice to pass that bill over the Presidents veto.
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immigration immigrants