I would hope to agree to any section of the House bill or any amendment of it which would seem to improve the present situation. But it is not exactly correct to say that there is no law on the question at present. It was testified by the immigration authorities that all they needed was the money for enforcement and that they could then detect. apprehend. and deport the alien seamen who have deserted. Just to state the problem very briefly. there were 23.994 desertions by alien seamen in the last fiscal year. I am confident that that is a complete census of those who deserted. because we have the advantage of the incoming and outgoing manifests. we know exactly how many members of the crew each ship is lacking when it goes out. and those figures -.re checked by a comparison with the records of the incoming and outgoing vessels. More than half of these men reship. It is a common thing for them to desert one ship and to ship again on another vessel going out to a foreign port. The figure 23.000 does not give an accurate picture of the number of smuggled immigrants who come in. I doubt very much. when we remember the number of reshipments and the number of men who desert in order to go to work on the Great Lakes each spring. as they are doing right at this minute. If we get more than two or three thousand smuggled immigrants in this way. It does not compare with the smuggling across the land borders. It does not compare with the smuggling from Cuba to the Florida coast so far as numbers are concerned.
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immigration immigrants