Speech #710182711

So I can not understand all that has been said upon that subject. .J recognize that we have our Glasses and our Blacks. that we have our Reeds. of whom we may be justly proud. but I recognize. too. that we have our Borahs. we have our Norbecks. and we have our McNarys. of whom we are equally proud. and I recognize that the strain in those whom I have last named is just exactly as good as the strain which may be found in the others. After all. sir. the test of American citizenship is the individual himself and whether or not he is worthy of American citizenship. To say to us in this country after we have been 150 years a nation that we shall go back a century and a half and then. upon the names there recorded. under the nationalorigins plan we shall limit our immigration. is not only unscientific and absurd. indeed practically impossible. but. sir. it denies during the whole period of 150 years when we have been a nati~n to those who carved it out from nothing in the beginning to its present eminence among the nations of the world the same opportunity and equality which may have been accorded those who In assumed superiority can trace or believe they can trace their ancestors back 150 years in the past. Again. upon the other question involved here of immigration and the reduction of immigration which now is asked by the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Virginia . 150.000 have we under the nationalorigins provision. It is asked to reduce that onehalf or threequarters. as the case may be. and that it shall be reduced in order that this Nation shall be protected. because the only theory upon which we are keeping people from coming to our shores is the safeguarding of our own institutions and the protection of our own people. Sir. I can not by the wildest stretch of the imagination believe that 150.000 immigrants coming from abroad will so water the lifeblood of 120.000.000 people that our future will be endangered or our safety imperiled. So I can not become particularly exercised either upon nationalorigins chimera or in the desire to reduce the number of 150.000 who now come into this land.