Speech #700189446

Speaker. this is not an overstatement. and if you gentlemen see proper to take a view different from that I express to you. and that on this lack of information and imnmature consideration. I ask you to calnly examine this measure hereafter and see whether or not I an warranted in the statements that I make. I ask you at the same time to watch the immigration figures jump up after the passage of this bill. as soon as it has time to get in full operation. It is the intention of those promoting this legislation. in and out of Congress. that this policy shall go forward. The Copeland amendment. passed by the Senate. provided that this date should be July 1. 1924. where June 3. 1921. now appears. and a majority of the conferees wanted that date fixed. but the chairman of the House committee was able to prevent the adoption of that date. It has been openly and repeatedly declaredI may safely say that it has been definitely determinedthat at an early session of Congress this date will be brought forward to Even when that date was yet in the Senate amendment alien and hyphenated influences. some chambers of commerce and others were protesting that the date should be brought down to now. so that while we were pardoning this 1.300.000. more or less. we should also pardon the several hundred thousand who came in thereafter up to the present in defiance of law. When you pass this measure you will have no sound reason on which to base a refusal to pass future measures like it. so that under such a policy the many thousands who got into the country illegally. avoiding all of our wholesome immigration restrictions. can be received into the body of our citizenship and can forthwith bring their relatives as nonquota immigrants. Gentlemen. you should not pass this measure. It makes a serious breach in our immigration and naturalization laws and adopts a policy which will continue this hurtful course to still worse consequences. Among other objectionable features of the Copeland amendment and this conference report is the preparation for a great Increase in the Naturalization Bureau. with the furnishing of a great many new Federal jobs and the piling up of further bureau expenses. My information and my judgment are that the enactment of this law will soon require that the personnel of the present Naturalization Bureau be soon increased to twice Its present number. For years I and other members of the committee have been coming before this House and before the Committeeon Appropriations asking for larger appropriations for the Immigration Service in order to better patrol the borders and to deport those for whose deportation the law provides. Again and again your committee has learned that the present force at the command of the Immigration Service is utterly inadequate. I have just called your attention to the testimony of Assistant Secretary of Labor White there were in 1926 at least 250.000 deportable aliens in the country. while our deportations rarely reached 12.000 in number. which is less than 1 in 20 of those who ought to be deported. Now. this bill proposes that these forces which have been inadequate for the work of protecting the borders against the smuggling in of immigrants and unequal to the work of deporting any considerable portion of our bad aliens. is to be diverted from that work and put to the task of making some sort of a formal field investigation of this 1.300.000. more or less. illegally in the country in order to grant them immunity and give them citizenship. They can not do such work adequately. It is a farce to pretend that they can do it. It is much like providing that the constables or other petty officers In the outlying portions of the county shall adjudicate land suits or try other important civil or criminal cases. To ask that this work be done by the field representatives of the Immigration Service is ridiculous. It means just what the whole bill meansthat the law is to be cheapened and impaired and its enforcement. already deplorably bad. made much worse.