Speech #710027466

I have been in Congress 24 years. At that rate we would have had poured into our country in my brief time in public life fully 25.000.000 of those people. I. with others in the House from the South and West. saw the necessity for restricted immigration. I had not been in the House very long until under the leadership of a brave Alabaman. John Burnett. of the seventh congressional district. who had become chairman of the Committee on Immigration. we started a vigorous fight to restrict immigration. We passed the bill. but President Taft vetoed it. and I do not hesitate to say to you that I believe it was the Roman influence here and foreign influences that caused him to veto it. Then later. when the Democrats were In power. we passed another immigration bill and President Wilson vetoed it. and I do not hesitate to say that the same Roman and foreign influences caused him to veto it. Senators. this influence is tremendous and dangerous in the United States. The time is here for all good Americans to wake up and demand that the American citizen be considered in questions of this kind. What right have any group to sit in their secret councils in foreign lands and dictate the immigration policy of the United States? Do they do it? Let me read to you further from this article: 1. That the campaign for the postponement or repeal of the nationalorigins provision of the immigration act was begun by persons formerly .associated with a publication subsidized by a foreign government. 2. That the publication which claims the credit for arousing the foreignlanguage press in the United States against the nationalorigins quota system Is actively engaged in promoting the political interests of a foreign nation today. Senators. do you get the full meaning of what this paper is suggesting? Are you giving consideration to the problem It presents-" pfomftng tlie political interests of a foreign nation in the United States?" 3. That foreign language press and foreign bloc leaders who can only thrive on a continuing fresh supply of immigrants who do not :speak our language have spread numerous gross misrepresentations about the nationalorigins provision among their followers. 4. That foreign steamship companies have lent their facilities for ithe organization of political opposition to the nationalorigins provisions. Senators. do you get the full purport of that statement? :Well do I recall our experience in the House with the steam!ship companies when we first began the fight for restricted immigration. Why. America had become the dumping ground for the criminal refuse of every country on the globe and they were being sent here at the rate of a million and a quarter a year.