Speech #680201722

In the Northwest we have not been ashamed to keep up spiritual communication with the rest of the world. for while we know that America is the finest. the best. part of the world. the land we love and the land that is ours. we know that it is not the whole world. nor has it a monopoly on all the virtue in the world. We are not afraid of new ideas. we welcome them. and we believe yet that the Old World will be benefited by again coming in contact with the ideas of America. I resent Ihe insinuation of the gentleman from Texas that I in voting for this bill have forgotten the immigrants. I have been an emigrant myself. and he has not. if he and other splendid gentlemen of his type had a clearer realization of what an emigrant is and how useful the average emigrant is here. we would get better Immigration laws than we now have. I know of my own experience how when a person who had emigrated to America came back for a visit the news of it ran from one end of the valley to the other like a prairie fire over our prairies out West. and I know what a splendid influence for good it was when a good. clean. moral person who had done well here came back and told the wonderful story of America. Up until the time of the war the intercourse was free and unrestricted between America and the northern countries of Europe. not even a passport was needed. I suppose it was the same in regard to most countries of Europe. I vote for this bill as a means of again opening up intellectual intercourse with the rest of the world. as a means of doing away with hatred and prejudice. as a means of again bringing the gospel of brotherly love from land to land. Mr. Chairman. it is this year a hundred years since the emigration from Norway to this country got its real start. In October. J825. the small sloop Restaurationen landed the first small group of Norse emigrants that became the forerunners for men and women that should build a mighty empire. together with other northern people. in that part of our country that has rightly been referred to as the "bread basket of the world." The American Norsemen are going to hold a centennial celebration this year. they are going to take a few days off from their labors and take stock of themselves. they have invited their kinfolk across the sea to come and help them celebrate. have invited them to come and inspect the 13.000.000 acres of fine farm lands that they own. and which the last census valued at about $880.000.000. Thousands of NorwegianAmerican pioneers of the Northwest are going to go back this year and take a last look at the old nest they once flew out from. and the passage of this bill will help realize a longcherished dream. When these people came here there were no passports and no visas needed. neither here nor in Europe. then no man was considered a criminal until he was proven to be one. Many an old farmer has told me that he wished to go back to look at his birthplace and his fathers and niothers grave. but that he was afraid to go under the new regulation. that imposes so much hardship and expense and that might even result in his being shut out from his own home that he has paid for with his sweat and his blood and from his own country. For the sake of these patient toilers that wish to take a holiday and that have so well earned it I vote for this bill.