Speech #680072479

While subdivision (g) of proposed section 19 corresponds exactly with subdivision (f) of section 19of the House bill. Section 18. as it appears in the House bill. has neither meaning nor force. It finds its origin in section 32 of the immigration act of 1917. and. strangely enough. clings to the expression "excluded from admission into the United States under the Immigration laws." which occasioned so much of the obbcurity- of the seamens sections of that act and was in part responsible for the litigation which arose and the judicial decisions which- were rendered concerning those sections. Obviously. if the loophole in the immigratibn law consists of the possibility that aliens employed as seamen or pretending. to be seamen may abuse their shore leave and remain permanently in the United States is to be even measurably closed. the authority to promulgate and enforce regulations must be broad enough to reach the case of every alien seaman. whether such seaman is "excluded from admission" or not. In the 1917 act Congress did not attemptto enter into any detail at allwith respectto the nature of the regulations. But in the present act Congress is. undertaking to lay down in the law itselfthe main outine ofthose regulations.