Speech #670195810

Let me repeat. extensive hearings. running for weeks and mionthis. were held by the committee. including numerous night sessions. They were wide open to all. Everybody came. and those that did not. like tlbe Labor Department and Immigration Bureau officials. we invited. Among those present and entitled to be heard were. as has been said. steamship officials. but there is nothing to the innuendo that there was any undue influence anywhere by anyone. Of the 2.443 in excess of quota which this resolution proposes to admit. let me call attention to the fact that 1.000 or more of them could not be deported to any countryto any place in the worldresolution or no resolution! You can not send back certain people who fled from Syria. Assyria. and Turkish Armenia months before there was a quota law. You can not send certlin Spaniards back to Spain when they left the United States in fishsiing vessels before there was a quota and got back from their fishing trips to find the quota law in existence and the quota from Spain exhausted in the first two months of the law. The immigration from Spain numbered 18.821 in 31920 and 23.81.8 in 1921. so that the excess of 97 during the time under consideration. it seenms to me. represents a very small surplus in view of the fact that Spains quota was only 663 for the present fiscal year. We have an excess quota from Spain of 97 ! Is not that remarkable in the working of a new law when Spanisih immigration dropped from 23.818 to alost nothing in a year? The excess of 432 from Turkey is due principally to Armenians and to some extent to Greeks. who were admitted in order to avoid grave and unusual hardship. They have been referred to in this debate as Turks. and they are. hut only because Turkey was their birthplace and in complete disregard of their adopted country.