Speech #710020112

I am inclined to think probably he was a little high. But a few months ago the New York Evening Post made a very careful survey of the number of people coming in here unlawfully every year. being smuggled in or. as the Senator from Idaho suggested. being "bootlegged " in. showing that it amounts to 200.000 each year. In the five years since 1924. when the last immigration law was enacted including the nationalorigins provision which is now to be considered in a few days. I understand. 200.000 a year each year. which is a conservative estimate. would mean that there are today 1.000.000 in the United States who came here unlawfully. who came without passports and without the consent of our people. who have no legal status. who can not become citizens. who may be enumerated after the 1st of next November by the enumerators. and who are subject to deportation the very first day after they are enumerated. and yet those million people are to be used as a basis for the selection and the apportionment of Members of the House of Representatives throughout the United States. If a million illegal immigrants have come in during the last five years. we may estimate that since the census of 1920 there have come In at least three or four million men and women who enjoy no legal status who are subject to -deportation if the Government could find them. and who under our naturalization laws are not entitled to become citizens of the United States. and yet under the terms of the bill as it is proposed here they are to be counted and considered as a basis for the selection of the Members of the House of Representatives and for the election of a President of the United States. Tell me the fathers of our country. the framers of our Constitution. intended any such ridiculous situation to be brought about? I do not believe it. and I do not accept that interpretation of the meaning of the framers of the Constitution or those who framed the fourteenth amendment to which reference has been made in the debate.