Speech #710023730

The American Federation of Labor has made its stand very clear upon that score. It hopes to see the nationalorigins clause repealed. There has been. too. the contention offered here. and I do not like to believe that it is for an unfair purpose. but it has been offered. namely. that under national origins we are going to depopulate or cut off that source of immigration which has filled our hospitals. which is constituting the numbers of paupers whom we are entertaining in this country. who are carrying about the dread diseases In this country. and that under national origins we are going to reduce the number of people of that kind that come to us. Immediately the question is asked. How is it going to do that? We get a discourse on the mass of immigration which comes into America from Mexico. which is not affected one iota by the nationalorigins clause or by the 1890 basis of immigration quotas. I say it is unfair to resort to those arguments in view of the fact that they do not apply in the least degree to the kind of immigration we are getting under the present basis of quotas and under the basis that would prevail under national origins. I have said that this is not a controversy between believers in restricted immigration and those who are not believers in restricted immigration. I have said it is my plan to offer an amendment to the bill from the further consideration of which we are trying to discharge the committee that will provide for such scaling down of quotas under the 1890 plan as will give us practically the same number or less of immigrants who can be admitted to America each year under the 1890 basis as would be admitted under the nationalorigins plan. I have had made a large chart dealing with immigration figures. I did not contemplate this morning that there would be ain opportunity for such a lengthy discussion this afternoon upon the subject and I therefore did not have the chart hung on the wall of the Chamber. I want to reserve until tomorrow a chance to argue in support of the present basis of immigration. namely. the basis which determines immigration on the percentage of foreignborn population found in America in 1890. But in showing the fairness of that plan I am not going to argue. I do not now argue. and I can never argue. that the 1890 basis is altogether accurate and fair. but I will argue that it is a fairer basis upon which to build immigration quotas than is the nationalorigins basis. and that we have a better opportunity to afford an understandable basis of quotas building upon the 1890 census than we do upon the nationalorigins basis. I shall argue that point tomorrow. as I shall also argue. Mr. President. a point that is being brought into this controversy. a point thatis bound to come up in this debate. whether I bring it up or not. a point that is uppermost in many minds. namely. that the nationalorigins basis of immigration is going to be a direct thrust at the slacker element. about which we heard so much in the United States during the course of the late World War. I am going to demonstrate that nothing of the kind is true. I am going to demonstrate that a basis of quotas under the nationalorigins clause is going to bring us no fewer slackers than are coming to us under the 1890 basis of immigration quotas. I am going also. in that connection. Mr.