Speech #670403472

At their homes? At a thousand places in Mexico and Canada? Immigrants come to America on irregular and tramp. ships from all the ports of the world. This. and their coming through Canada and Mexico. would force us to maintain our seaport and land frontier stations and to turn back many front them. Establishing foreign stations would merely add a great system of distant stations.without eliminating home stations or avoiding the necessity of rejecting great numbers of immigrants at them. If foreign countries would permit it. which we have found they will not do. the plan is impossible. Of course. the only place for our stations and guards is at our own ports and on our own frontiers. It is urged that If prospective immigrants were inspected and selected abroad. they would be protected from the hardship resulting from their selling their effects and breaking themselves loose from their homes and sources of livelihood. expecting to be admitted to the United States only to find themselves denied admission and be thrown adrift penniless. friendless. and far from home. Unless the stations were located. at prohibitive cost. in hundreds -of places. the prospective immigrants could not be selected near their present homes. The establishment of immigration stations in a few great cities on the coasts in Europe. Asia. and Africa would not meet this difficulty. These seaports are hundreds of miles from the present homes of most of the immigrants and in countries foreign and strange to them. They would have to go in families hundreds of miles. often across national boundaries. necessitating passports. and a great part of tie travel. expense. and difficulty which they now meet. The average immigrant can not. without selling all. carry his family from the center of Europe to the seacoast for examination. If he could. he would not know ]how long it would require him to return to ills home with his family to sell out and return to the immigration station on the coast. The uncertainty. delay. expense. and other difficulties of such a course would forbid its adoption by the immigrant. who usually has little or nothing. He sells all. and even under the proposed plan would sell all and break up completely. before leaving his old home to go to the place of inspection and embarkation. The risk and loss of this breaking up would have to be incurred under any system except one that sent the inspector to the prospective immigrant at or near hiS present home. which is manifestly impossible.