Speech #680072479

Elsewhere in the act there is general. authority for the promulgation of regulations. This beingthe situation. there is no necessity for section 18 as it appears in the House bill. hence the proposal to strike it out. It is very important. however. that the law shall in words require the examination by. immigrant inspectors and publichealth surgeons of al alien seamen entering United Stites ports. The omission of such specifications from the seamens sections of the 1917 act always caused embarrassment and difficulty. especially when the circumstance was added to the one already mentioned that section 32 of said act was so written as to indicate that the regulations authorized thereby were to be applied only to such as would have been inadmissible if applying as immigrants. The. provisions of suggested new section 18 may be briefly described thus: Of course. the filst thing to be determined with regard to any alien claiming to be a seaman is whether his case is bona fide. If he is merely pretending to be a seaman when his real intention is to be an immigrant. he should be treated as an immigrant. But this question shonld be determined carefully and room should not be left* for perpetration of injustices. Hence thet provision allowing an appeal. Moreover. vessels APinm t must not be allowed to bring mala fide seamen here- and then. upon their exclusion. to take them back. To. permit that would be simply to place a premium upon the employment of such people. for enforcement of the law would aid masters to keep their vessels manned. coming and going. with cheap employeeshence the provision requiring deportation by a vessel other than that by which brought. The second circumstance which. by suggested section 18. Immigrant inspectors are required to inquire into is covered In detail by subdivision (f) of suggested section 19. and Is discussed hereinafter In regular order. If the country Is to be protected against loathsome and dangerous contagious diseases all seamen must be subjected to careful medical examination. This also is specifically required by the suggested section. It will be observed that In the suggested substitute for subdivision (a) of section 19 some important changes have been made with reslaect to the landing card. As the House bill leaves section 36 of the Immigration act of 1917 intact. repealing only sections 32. 33. and 34 thereof. and as section 36 requires masters to furnish crew lists. there is no necessity for placing crewlist Information In the landing card. It Is essential. however. that the landing card shall contain a complete description of the alien to whom given. The proposed changes accomplish these things. The card is required to be furnished in duplicate. not In triplicate. It Is not seen that any good would be accomplished by requiring a triplicate. It is essential that a duplicate of the card shall be retained. filed. and accurately indexed at the port of arrival. and this is specified in subdivision. (b) . but to place still another copy in the Bureau of Immigration at Washington would be a mere duplication of work and expense. with no compensating advantages that can be Imagined. In rewriting subdivision (b) of section 19 the provision permitting an immigrant inspector to note upon the landing card the time during which it shall be valid has been omitted. and also the provision making It unlawful for any alien seaman to remain in the United States after the expiration of the validity of his landing card. Such legislation would be both dangerous and unprecedented. It would place all alien seamen absolutely at the mercy of immigrant Inspectors. and make it incumbent upon the Secretary of Labor to deport every seaman who stayed here longer than some inspector thought It right for him to stay. It would be. in effect. allowing subordinate officers both to legislate and to pass judgment upon matters which ought to be determined by Congress. at least to the extent of fixing an approximate rule. and the judge upon which should at least be a superior administrative officer. To meet the situation just described with legislation of a reasonable nature calculated to be both just and effective there has been added in proposed subdivision (c) a provision under which aliens claiming to be seamen who remain here for unreasonable periods of time could be deported in the regular way and with due process of law. Subdivision (c) of the House bill has been omitted. because It seems obvious that no useful purpose would be served by taking up the landing card every time a seaman departs. and so doing would make it necessary for a new card to be issued each time a seaman arrives--a multiplication of work. with no compensating advantage. and a constant piling up of records which would soon become too voluminous to index and therefore worthless. Subdivision (c) of proposed section 19 contains a provision which will. if enacted Into law. very materially reduce the immigration evils resulting from the seamens situation. This Is a perfectly reasonable requirement. it is thought. and no vessel of foreign registry could consistently complain of a provision which is merely confirmatory of and supplementary to requirements of laws of all seafaring countries. For example. the laws of Great Britain. which may be referred to as typical. contemplate that vessels shall return to the port at which embarked all seamen engaged for foreign voyages. (See the Merchant Shipping Acts. second edition. p. 102 et seq.) By requiring every vessel entering a port of the United States to carry out a crew equal in number to that brought one of the greatest evils encountered In administering the Immigration laws will be. at least measurably. met. Experience has shown that vessels often bring more alien employees than are needed to operate the vessel. and sometimes this is deliberately done In order to further violations and evasions of the Immigration :laws. If each vessel is forced to carry away as many as it brings. the profit from bringing supernumeraries will be materially cut down. and this particular temptation will be correspondingly reduced. Incidentally. a law of this kind would distinctly tend to place American ships upon an even footing. as compared with foreign ships. in the matter of the cost of labor. American ships usually must now obtain their crews in* American ports and undertake to bring all their crew men back to this country. therefore. on the average they must carry full crews coming back as well as going out. Foreign ships coming to our ports are supposed. so far as the laws of their own countries are concerned. to carry their crew men back to the foreign port of shipping. There is no good reason why our laws should either encourage or permit them to do otherwise. especially when to do so results In the constant and continuous increase of our alien populations. contrary to an established immigration policy. It remains only to discuss subdivision (f) of proposed section 19. which contains the most important of the several suggested provisions. The aliens who have always given most concern in connection with the loophole In the immigration law which it is here attempted to close are the orientalsSapanese. Chinese. Singhalese. Lascars. and Hindus. in particular. This is because our Immigration laws have for a number of years been especially directed against the influx of cheap oriental labor. and the very strictness of the laws increases the temptation to violate them by the use of the seamens occupation or by other devious means. Of course. It would not be reasonable to attempt to prohibit vessels of foreign registry from entering United States ports when manned with crews the members of which belong to the same country as the vessel. Every nation naturally desires that Its merchant marine shall be manned to the fullest extent possible by Its own citizens or subjects. Moreover. the menace is not nearly so great. from the point of view of our immigration policy. where the orientals come on vessels flying their own flag as it is when they come on vessels belonging to a country to which they do not owe allegiancethe incentive for them to leave the vessel and remain in this country is less and the incentive for the owners and officers of the vessels to maintain thereon such conditions as will tend to keep them with the vessels is greater. Furthermore. with the single exception of the Japanese. these oriental seamen have been and are being brought to ports of this country by vessels belonging to merchant marine other than those of the countries to which such seamen belong. It can readily be seen. therefore. that the proposed provision would very materially reduce the difficulties which have been encountered in this direction. for if this proposed measure should be enacted. while Japanese vessels could still come into our ports manned with Japanese crews and Chinese vessels manned with Chinese crews. Japanese vessels could not bring Chinese crews and vessels belonging to the large merchant marines of the world could not come here manned with Chinese. Hindus. lascars. Senegalese. or other oriental crews. picked up in countries which have no merchant marines of their own. and leave them here to swell our alien populations and increase our immigratioi problems. And it should be emphasized here that in drafting this proposal the term "merchant marine " has been advisedly used in the language of which it is part. for the situation to be met is peculiarly difficult. so many of the Asiatic countries involved not being independent nations with respect to the people of which the words "citizens " or "nationals " could be used accurately or with that narrowness of meaning necessary to the accomplishment of the objects here in view. The House bill as originally drafted. and apparently until toward the close- of its discussion In the House committee. contained a provision in section 18 for the exaction of bonds on account of seamen "ineligible to citizenship or excluded from admission Into the United States." This project was abandoned. presumably because the committee became convinced that the regulationsheld by the courts to be unauthorizedwhich the Department of Labor has been enforcing and under which bonds were exacted had not worked satisfactorily but had amounted. In effect. simply to the placing of a $500 head tax upon oriental laborers entering the United States in the guise of seamen. and. presumably also because the committee came to realize that the exaction of such bonds would interfere with the intended operation of the seamens act. But in removing this bonding project from the bil the House committee offered nothing as a substitute to reach the greatest evil resulting from the present situation with respect to seamen. to wit. the entry of orientals as seamen to remain as immigrants. Here is a substitute containing none of the objectionable features of the original House project and calculated to accomplish the desired results: