Speech #680081382

Speaker. there can be discrimination "In favor of" as well as discrimination "against." and I favor this bill and Intend to vote for It because it discriminates In favor of the American people. When I sit down to a table spread with various kinds of foods I proceed to discriminate in my selections against those foods which experience has shown are not wise to be taken into my body. and discriminate in favor of those foods which when eaten will produce comfort. strength. and health. The table of immigration is spread for us by foreign countries. We can only. in the first instance. receive such innigrants as the foreign countries are willing to permit to leave their shores. for any country has the right to fix conditions on which its citizens can leave its boundaries. and can. if it sees fit. prohibit any from leaving. This right has been exercised from time to time in the past. particularly during periods of wars when the nation wanted its own citizenship to remain at homic to help defend the country. We have never complained of the exercise of that right by foreign countries. We now claim the right. and intend to exercise it. of discriminating in favor of ourselves by selecting from the immigrants offered to us by foreign countries such races. classes. and elements as when taken into our body politic will be readily assimilated and add strengtlh to our Nation. Who has a right to complain of our so doing. and if any foreign country does complain. what right has an American Congress. legislating for the American people. to consider the complaint of some foreign country over how we solve a purely domestic problem because perchance it may interfere with the desires of some of the citizens of that foreign country? I readily pay a just and merited tribute to the contribution that has been made to this country by those who in years gone by came here from foreign shores to help make America the great Nation that it Is today. From the time of the Revolutionary War down to the present. the names of foreign born are written high in the history of this country. We are all of us foreigners. one. two. or three generations back. But. it does not follow because unrestricted foreign immigration was good for our country at one stage of Its development that It Is good for our country today. In the big cities of our country there exist today large blocs of unassimilated foreign elements living apart by tlemselves on whom the meltingpot process has not suceeded in breaking down the barriers of language. custom. and tradition. and will not for many years to come. This condition is dangerous to our body politic and must not be permitted to go on. The time has come when in selfdefense we must take into our country only that quantity and quality of immigration that we can readily assimilate. The Atlantic coast has its problem growing out of immigration from Europe. The Pacific coast has its problem growing out of immigration from the Orient. Ours. however. is the more serious. because we of the West are confronted with an immigration which no length of time can ever succeed in assimilating into our race. for tie Japanese are nonassimilable. This bill. therefore. carries a very proper and necessary provision excluding immigrants ineligible to citizenship. The Japanese have no grounds to feel that this proposal is intended as a reflection upon their nation. because it is a regulation operative against the entire yellow and brown races. which constitute onehalf of the population of the globe. To permit the Japanese to enter our shores would be to give them a privileged status that is accorded to no other nation or people in the whole yellow and brown races.