Speech #700171197

Mr. Speaker. will the Speaker call my attention when I have used 10 minutes? Gentlemen of the House. this bill is not for the purpose of making any drastic change in the immigration law. It is for the purpose of making certain and clear the intent of the Congress with respect to one point of the immigration law of 1924. in view of certain court decisions which the committee believes have departed from the real intent of the Congress. When the immigration law of 1924 was adopted it was found necessary to permit certain persons to enter the United States as nonimmigrants. Those classes of persons were clearly set forth in the immigration law. The classes of nonimmigrants. that is. persons who were not to be treated as immigrants at all. but who could come into the United States temporarily because they were not immigrants. were set forth in section 3 of the immigration law. and they are made up of six different classes of persons. The first class is the government official. his family. attendants. servants. and employees. That is. those who come here to represent another country as officials of that country are not immigrants to this country. Second. an alien visiting the United States temporarily as a tourist or temporarily for business or pleasure. Those people were not to be considered as immigrants. They could come in for a brief limited period and then depart without undergoing the rules and regulations of quota. and so forth. that govern immigrants. The third class was the alien in continuous transit through the United States. That is. if a man came from a foreign country and landed at New York. but his destination was Montreal. Canada. he could pass through the United States without becoming an immigrant to the United States. Fourth. an alien lawfully admitted to the United States and who later goes in transit from one part of the United States to another through a foreign contiguous territory. That is. an immigrant admitted lawfully to this country. living in Buffalo. but passing to Chicago across the lower part of Canada. did not become an Immigrant again when reaching the United States at Detroit. and so forth. Now trouble has arisen with respect to the second class that I named. that is. the alien visiting the United States temporarily as a tourist or temporarily for business or p!easure. Certain persons have come to the borders of the United States and claimed the protection of this clause 2 as noniminigrants on the ground that they were intending temporarily to enter the United States for business. That business in each of these instances has consisted of this. either going into the United States to engage in a job of labor or some employment for which they have a contract. or. second. going into the United States to hunt for a job as a laboring man. or in some such employment. It was never the thought of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization that a person coming into the United States to take a job. or to go about the country hunting for a job. was engaged in business. The intention the committee had is clearly expressed in its debates. and that was that we should not raise around the United States a Chinese wall through which business men. engaged in trade and having one part of such trade in a foreign country and the other part in this countryinternational commerceought not to be deprived of entering the United States temporarily for the purpose of carrying on a legitimate. substantial business which had. as I have said. a part of its situs in this country and part in another country.