Speech #680200973

I say that while I would gladly vote for a bill which would authorize the refund of that vis6 fee today. while I would not want to keep the money of those immigrants who paid it thinking they could get into America. yet. their mistake was not our fault. and the way to rectify a $10 mistake is not to admit a lot of undesirable immigrants to the United States. Let me say one thing more. The State Department is very properly giving preference to that group of immigrants who are stranded there in European ports. picking them out accordlng to their entire acceptability under our immigration laws. The hardest cases have been relieved. the cases for which the greatest sympathy is felt. the cases of the greatest hardship have already been admitted to the United States lawfully within the quotas established by the new law. It is quite right and proper that they should be. but for us to do as we have been asked to do by various societies. pass a general a"mnesty suspending the quota for all persons there in those European ports. would. in my judgment. be a wicked departure from the principle which Congress has established. Let me tell Senators one thing more. I was in Cherbourg last summer where there are a very large number of these immigrants stranded. They gave them work there. The municipality of Cherbourg went out of its way to find work for those stranded inmigrants.