Speech #670230183

That applied to 400.000.000 Chinese. I now call attention to a new proposition. which is made in the interest of the Shipping Board. or of the people who are to buy our ships from the Shipping Board and be subsidized in their operation. It is solemnly proposed in that bill to give the Shipping Board a voice in our immigration policy. when its only possible interest would be to enable it. or the subsidized private purchasers of ships. to get financial returns from the handling of immigration. I have no objection to American ships handling their share of such immigration as comes to the United States. I hope the volume of that business will not he large. I do not want to put the*United States. nor any agency belonging to it. where it will be tempted to increase its financial returns by increasing the volume of immigration. Managers of the Shipping Board apparently know nothing about shipping. The shipping bill which they are sponsoring proves that they know nothing about our immigration laws. The pending shipping bill contains a provision that they can do certain things in handling immigrants "anything in the immigration law of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding." It gives the United States Shipping Board. whose only interest is in financial returns from handling immigrants. a voice in making of the rules and regulations governing immigration. some of which may be made "anything in the immigration law of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding." Immigration legislation should be handled by Congress. through the agency of its appropriate committees. and. by itself. It will be dangerous. indeed. to turn over this important subject to a committee not familiar with its difficult details and to the Shipping Board and others. whose knowledge of the subject Is superficial and whose interests are divergent fron the great public Interest to be served by proper immigration legislation. The statement just made by the gentleman from Washington to the effect that the provisions of the shipping bill relating to immigration have provoked emphatic protests from foreign Governments is not surprising. Orderly legislation can be obtained and the best public interest promoted by having immigration legislation reported by the proper committee. The policies behind it should be prompted by the public interest. and not by the financial gains of Shipping Board vessels or of subsidized American shipping. Mr.