Congress ought not to have delegated to the Executive the power to shut the door of our country upon deserving people. If we do not want aliens in the United States. let.the Congress have the.courage to meet its responsibility and say so. If there be in America a majority which would shut and seal the door of immigration. let it be shut and sealed by the constitutional authority of our country. Let us not hark back to the old Federal spirit of 1798. and delegate to the President and to his subordinates of the executive branch the power of saying who shall come to the United States. Oh. that power may not be fairly exercised. It may not be wisely exercised. Under it thousands of persons who are eligible to come to this country as immigrants according to laws which Congress has passed are now actually being arbitrarily excluded and will be arbitrarily excluded permanently. Discrimination is being pfacticed now in the visCing of passports. Applications for vis~s are not being considered by our consuls in the order in which they are made. They -are not being granted or refused on the ground of their merit or lack of it. The Department of State is assuming to say who- shall and who shall not come. not on the ground of eligibility under the immigration laws. not with relation to their character. but with relation to some arbitrary and fanciful standard which the department has adopted. I have only today received a letter from time Department of State in which Mr. Adee says that our consuls are discriminating. to the extent that they do not consider the applications of eligible immigrants in the order of their application. but that preference is being given to the wives and minor ehildreft and elderly parents of those who are now here. Perhaps if there must be a discrimination. that is a discrimination along proper lines. I make no question of that. but I do say that Congress is the body that ought to say w"ho shall come to this country. and we ought to repeal the vise act.
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immigration immigrants