Speech #660144077

This is an American question. I am glad to see that the whole House. as well as the whole committee. approaches this question In that spirit. determined to eradicate by all methods within the means of law every scoundrel who is engaged in this movement. even if he is an American. and to see that he gets the full penalty of the law. so that every man. whether native born or otherwise. in this country can live here in peace. and that our form of government will be sustained in the present and future as it has been sustained in the past. At hist the American people have awakened to the conditions which have too long existed at the immigration station located at Ellis Island. in the harbor of New York. Much was anticiipated from the passage of the immigration law of 1917. and although many thinkers and publicists of note differed as. to the wisdom of its socalled literacy test. yet once it had been enacted over the Presidents veto they all looked forward to the provisions of the law being fully enforced. In lieu of a fair administration of. the law. they have discovered to their dismay that extreme haste is exercised in the return of the ordinary immigrant who may. be technically disqualified to enter ind a decided tendency to permit those creatures who are Opposed to our form of government to be dischrged on their own recognizance or. released on nominal bail. No real physical or mental examination of the arriving immigrants takes place. On board the Adriatic less than onequarter of a minute was taken for the physical examination of each immigrant." It was conducted by. one doctor instead of two as required by the statute. The general mental aid mnoral examination was conducted by one inspector instead of two. and in each instance did notexceed two minutes. The entire procedure has indeed been characterized. and properly so. as a farce. It has. to a large extent. endangered the safety and health of our people. It has allowed those who should never have been permitted to enter to come in and become the advocates of violence and hate against our institutions. It has also caused the honest and lawabiding immigrant. who has come here for the purpose of becoming a real American citizen in the fullest sense of the term. to be looked upon with askance.. He has been unjustly accused of many crimes and offenses of which he has been innocent. It has engendered bad feeling against iim in many of the sparsely settled States.