Speech #680144866

I-[EFLIN. Mr. President. for many years I have been an ardent advocate of restricted immigration. I hold that the manner in which Immigrants have been illegally slipped into tl United States during the last three years Is a disgrace to this Nation. Immigration agents have made money. they have grown rich selling passports into the United States. Some of the newspapers of the country have bitterly assailed those crooked agents. We passed a law here not long ago cuttiag down the number of immigrants that might come into our country. You were filling this land with Bolsheviks. with anarchists. with kidnapers. and with people who are the deadly enemies of the American form of government. The sentiment of fourfifths of the American people is against loose immigration laws and strongly in favor of restricted immigration. Mr. President. where the wives of men who are already American citizens and their children desire to come to our shores. I know it makes a sympathetic appeal to us. but I believe that this is a fixedup job on the American Nation. I think that the Immigrant agents held those immigrants back and slipped in their full quota. relying upon the sympathy and bigheatedness of our people to let these 14.000 additional immigrants come In. Is this law to be enforced or is it not to be enforced? That is the question whtcl now confronts us. Mr. President. it must be that the immigration agents have been apprehended by somebody who has been watching or we never would have heard of these 14.000 persons. they would have been slipped in as hundreds of thousands of others have been. with the agents holding their hands behind them. growing fat atnd rich upon bartering the birthright of the American boy and girl. Here there comes in the closing hours of the session a pitiful appeal to our generosity and our bigheartedness to open the door and let 14.000 immigrants come in. with the story that they are the wives and children of citizens who are already here. What are these citizens doing here. leaving their wives and children at home? Why did they not bring them in when their quotas were not exhausted?