Speech #660312208

Mr. President. I offered another amendment on the 5t] day of January. and which consists of the immigration bil which passed the House. I shall ask to have it read when take my seat. I believe that we can enact some lq .slatio which may reieve or ameliorate the conditions composing this socalled emergency. Among them is the restriction of immigration. Foreigners of all kinds. classes. and conditions. Chinese and Japanese excepted. are pouring into this country from practically every nation in the world. The Commissioner of Immigration tells us that 15.000.000 will come just as soon as transportation facilities will permit. The great steamship companies are. of course. as they always have done. encouraging this migration to America. One of them closed a contract with Hungary the other day for all the emigrants from that nation during the next five years. The only limitation to the present flood is the lack of tonnage upon the seas. although the tonnage available is sufficient to transport something like 100.000 a month to our shores. who distribute themselves in the great cities of the country. and become either an added burden to the producing energies of the Nation. a further menace to our civilization. oras is frequently the casea .desirable addition of hardworking. honest men and women. No man can say how many. for we neither have the machinery nor the inclination to sift the wheat from the tares. Hence we make but little discrimination between these classes. They all comethe fairly welltodo and the poor. the lame and the blind and the halt. the Slav and the Pole. the Austrian. the German. the Irishman. the Englishman. the Frenchman. eager to enjoy the opportunities and advantages of the one surviving commercial productive world power. Naturally. when one reflects even casually upon the results of the war upon Europe. this impulse for immigration becomes irresistible when it can be gratified. Mr. President. I firmly believe that the Immigration laws of the United States should be completely suspended for at least a year. and that the Congress should utilize that interval in framing and enacting a logical immigration law. I believe that our social and economic and moral degeneration is largely due to our system of indiscriminate. uncontrolled. and highly stimulated immigration. We are concerned about the exclusion of Japanese from Callfornia. and I am in hearty sympathy with the policy. not because they are Japanese but because of racial conditions which are too obvious for discussion. but the average Japanese immigrant to this country is infinitely superior mentally. morally. and nationally to an enormous percentage of the immigration which comes here from Europe without any question at all and which. indeed. is encouraged by American beneficiaries of protection. I am glad that the Chinese are excluded. and for racial reasons. but I infinitely prefer Chinamen to the mass of immigration now coming from Russia. from the Near East. and from other sections of the world. They not only increase our present financial and material burdens but they infinitely increase the menace to our institutions and supply the most fertile of all ground for the propagation of ideas and antagonisms to American institutions which are the prime cause of that terrible wave of crime and lawlessness that has swept over the country for the past two years. With all due respect to the Committee on Immigration of the Senate. I am astonished that the House bill has not been reported for passage long ago. and much more surprised that some members of that committee. if the papers are to be credited. have expressed themselves as inimical to further immigration legislation at this time.