Mr. President. it seems to be impossible to discuss immigration restriction without arousing the feelings of a great number of sensitive groups and hypersensitive groups. I never said that the Syrian people were the trash of the Mediterranean. and anyone who reads my statements will see that I did not. I said that from all around the shores of the Mediterranean came the trash of that region and that they came from the Turkish Provinces and from Syria and from all the other countries which I could have listed. That is true. Everyone who hears my voice at this moment knows that it is true. But it is equally true that I made no reflection whatSoever upon the Syrians as a race or as an immigrant strain. Anyone who undertakes to debate the subject of immigration restriction will find himself the unlucky victim of that kind of misconstruction. He will be accused of a racial prejudice of which he is wholly unconscious. Sometimes the accusation will be made to curry favor with the people in question and sometimes it will be made because of their hypersensitiveness. I have said In every speech I have ever made on immigration that we can treat this question only in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence that all men were born equal. and that remark is always included. and invariably an effort is made to introduce questions of race prejudice. If America is to legislate soundly on this subject it can not be done in that spirit.
Keywords matched
immigrant immigration