Speech #690245579

If it is thrown into the next national campaign. it will be a redhot issue. This question should have been settled now. the staving off of settlement for a year will only serve to increase dissatisfaction among a very large element of our people. Two of the recommendations made by the Commissioner General of Immigration in his last report should be heeded. He says: Subdivisions (b). (c). (d). and (e) of Section II of the immigration act of 1924. under which the allotments will be determined according to national origin rather than the country of birth. should be rescinded. The advantage of the present method. for administrative purposes. are Its simplicity and certainty and the further fact that It Is well established by practice for more than five years. the allotments under the previous quota law having been ascertained. Alsoa quota should be fixed for natives of countries of the Western Ilemisphere. aud section 4 (c) amended accordingly. The stream of immigration of these peoples should quite properly be checked to accord with the limitations which have been placed upon the migration of parent stock from Europe. The design of the present law Is obviously to bring to our shores in reasonable numbers the races and peoples from which we are descendants. and we are not Justified at the same time In permitting the unlimited flow of immigrants from this hemsphere. These suggestions are absolutely timely and coming from the official that administers our Immigration laws should have great force. So outspoken was Congress In its intent to keep our future Immigration within certain channels that the law of 1924 made the most radical and in many ways the most unjust discrimination against peoples that had sent us great numbers of immigrants during the last two decades. These peoples will most of them be neither helped nor hurt by the nationalorigin quota basis. because. bluntly speaking. the law intended to restrict their numbers drastically. But to leave the door open for unrestricted immigration to peoples so vastly different than any of the strains of blood making up this Nation Is a matter that should be of grave concern if we intend to be considered serious in such an important matter as our immigration question. The nationalorigin quota..base should be repealed or rather should not be allowed to go into effect. because it is a breach of faith with millions of people in this country who in good faith had agreed to the program for immigration �restriction in 1924 and who had been led to believe that they were to be considered as being of the same blood as the original stock. I voted against the passage of the 1924 Immigration law because I could -visualize what would happen. and my fears have more than been justified. For that reason I have given some study to this question in this session of Congress. and I wish to make my protest against the nationalorigin scheme a matter of record. My observations were put together for the record of the hearings in committee. but I became convinced that the committee tackled this question with serious intentions of doing the right thing and that no good purpose would be served in making a fuss about it. The thought behind the restriction of immigration is to preserve the blood of the American people as nearly like what it was at the time of the Revolution and the making of our Constitution as possible. The thought behind the racial preservation is that our Institutions and our Government may be preserved along the lines on which they were created and developed. The proponents of the national origins think that that can best be done by letting in mostly Britishers and by keeping out nearly everybody else. Mr. Trevor. the father of the national origins. who put the greatgreat British grandfather clause in the immigration law. lays down three reasons for immigration restrictions: First. We want to maintain a high standard of living in the United States. Second.