Speech #670230171

Our complete and overwhelming ruin would follow inevitably and soon. Moreover. our experience as to the attitude of our Presidents toward this problem should warn us of the great danger of passing absolute or chief control of it to him. The Presidents constant contact with delicate and difficult questions of our foreign relations and the necessity of maintaining cordial diplomatic relations with foreign countries expose him and his advisors and agencies to the constant tendency toward too great liberality in immigration regulations. Our own people now almost uniformly confess that we have in the past been liberal to the point of ruinous looseness in our immigration policies. but even such restrictive measures as have been adopted in the past have nearly all been enacted in the face of Executive opposition. Nearly every step forward in the policy of restriction has been taken by overstepping the Presidents veto of restrictive laws. In 1879 President Hayes vetoed the first Chineseexclusion act (2 1. C. R. 580). In 1882 President Arthur vetoed an act suspending Chinese immigration for a period of 20 years (2 1. C. R. 581). On March 3. 1897. President Cleveland vetoed an immigration act excluding illiterates (2 1. C. R. 573). President Taft vetoed an immigration bill in 1.913 containing a restriction against the admission of illiterates (p. 101. Rec.. special sess.. 59th Cong.). In 1917 President Wilson vetoed an act excluding illiterates. but Congress passed it over his veto. In 1868 the Burlingame treaty between the United States and China declared it to be the inalienable right of men to migrate and emigrate at will. California had then been. for 15 years. alarmed and in trouble on account of the coming of great numbers of Chinese. The California Legislature had passed laws in efforts to protect the State. Pacific coast cities had passed ordinances for the same purpose. Congress itself. in 1862. had taken note of the degradation and slavery of Chinese coolie laborers. and had forbidden American ships to transport them. This was seven years before the Burlingame treaty was made by the President and ratified by the Senate. declaring the right of such people to migrate to the United States to be " inalienable." So aptly did the treatymaking power deal with the problem in that instance. Conditions in California and on the Pacific coast were then and soon afterwards so bad that. in 1872. California was pleading with Congress for the exclusion of the Chinese. that is. for the deprivation of the "inalienable right" of Chinese to come to America in tens or even hundreds of millions. A congressional committee was sent to California. where it found conditions very bad. In 1879 Congress passed what was practically a Chinese exclusion act and undertook to abrogate the obnoxious sections of the Burlingame treaty of 1868. Here another unfortunate incident to immigration regulation by treaty developed. President Hayes vetoed the exclusion act. giving as one reason his contention that Congress had no right to abrogate a treaty. His action illustrated the fact that the President can nullify an exclusion act of Congress passed by any majority less than twothirds. and that Congress has no power to relieve the country of a treaty so dangerous as was that one by any majority less than twothirds of both branches. President Hayes claimed that Congress had no power to abrogate a treaty at all. The President can make such a treaty with the approval of twothirds of one branch of Congress. A new treaty was made by the United States and China in 1880. in which China succeeded in limiting the freedom of the United States to deal with Chinese immigration in its own way. This treaty stipulated that the United States might limit or suspend the coming of laborers only and prohibited the United States to forbid general Chinese immigration. In 1880 Congress passed an act suspending Chinese immigration for 20 years. President Arthur vetoed the act. chiefly on the ground that a 20year suspension of Chinese immigration was not " reas~nable" within the meaning of that term in the clause of our treaty with China permitting the United States to limit or suspend the coming of laborers in such a manner and to such extent as " shall be reasonable." It was soon found that this immigration treaty was unwise. and the United States asked China to agree to its abrogation. She objected and delayed until Congress passed a drastic Chinese exclusion law. from which the President withheld his approval until be became convinced that China would not enter a new treaty abrogating the treaty of 1880. of which the United States was now anxious to be rid. President Roosevelt made an agreement. which he insisted on having treated as valid and binding. as being supreme law. without even consulting the Senate about it. He called it a treaty."