Speech #710163236

Chairman and Members of Congress. I have introduced in Congress H. R. 8708. which has for Its purpose the exclusion of certain citizens of the Philippine Islands from the United States. placing them in the same status as the Chinese under the Chinese exclusion act of 1882 and the Japanese under the Japanese exclusion act of 1924. One of the gravest problems that has ever faced the people of the Pacific coast is the third invasion of our country by a horde of nonassimilable Asiatics. which has already resulted in very serious and deplorable race riots. Recently the world was startled by dispatches from the Pajaro Valley in California. revealing the intense jealousy and racial hatred which these Asiatic Immigrants have aroused. But. my friends. these occurrences were only what we of the Pacific coast have long feared. The States of California. Oregon. and Washington are more remote from us here in the National Capital than the shores of Maine are from the coast of Europe. These three Pacific Coast States are the outposts of western civilization. Asiatics have always looked with longing eyes on the rich. fertile valleys of these great States. California. in particular. has a mild. semitropical climate favorable to the most diversified agricultural production. In area it is the second largest in the Union. and its industrial development is equal to that of many States in the East. If It had not been for the immigration restrictions which the Federal Government placed against the Chinese and the Japanese. our State would today be overrun by these orientals in overwhelming numbers. With the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Chinese laborers began to flock there. so that at a later period it became vitally necessary that very stringent measures be adopted. Consequently. In 1882. Congress passed the Chinese exclusion law. It is well to remember that the preponderant majority of the Members of that Congress had no oriental race problem in their own respective States. They enacted that law solely in response to the earnest plea of their American brothers on the Pacific seaboard that congressional action be taken before the Chinese problem became a nationwide menace. During the early part of the present century the Pacific coast experienced the second Asiatic invasion. consisting of