Speech #700110973

We have heard the talk that we have too many people engaged in agriculture. Here we provide for bringing some more in. always. of course. if they will work for low wages. This House would vote for any amendment to the immigration law that would permit the entry of fathers and mothers as citizens. The committee knows it and will not dare to put it to the House. We can not under suspension of the rules as this bill is being considered offer an amendment as to fathers and mothers of citizens. and the committee proposes to jam this measure down under a suspension of the rules. and the best test of their unwillingness to consider this matter upon the merits is that you divide the time for the discussion of the bill only among those who favor the bill. No other committee of this House would do that. If it were the purpose of the Committee on Immigration to prevent competition with American labor they could have stopped 300.000 Mexicans each year at the boundary. When the immigrants come from southeastern Europe they already have their relatives here. they have their contact here. and they do not go to work for starvation wages under the padrone system. That is why they are undesirable to the committee and employers of cheap labor. But you go down to the Mexican border. as the hearings show. and there they hire those people and pay them shamefully low wages and work them all hours of the day and night. and you do not hear anything from them about the restriction of immigration.