Speech #710269837

Speaker. the gentleman from Ohio has referred to me as the author of this bill. That is hardly correct. The bill is one introduced by the chairman of the Committee on Immigration. the gentleman from Washington . whose committee has jurisdiction of this subject. It is the outcome of an effort made by me to secure justice and fairness for the taxpayers of my county. My county of Westchester is adjacent to the City of New York. and has a rapidly growing population with a very large number of aliens in it. There is a great naturalization business. That business has been conducted by the clerk of the county of Westchester as the clerk of the supreme court. and it has been found that the allowance which he now receives under the existing statute is very much less than the cost of the service rendered to the Federal Government. Under existing law. which. as I understand. is not fully quoted in the report. he is limited to receive automatically onehalf of the fees paid up to a limit of $6.000. That is to say he is limited to receive as reimbursement for the expense incurred in rendering the service to $3.000. The existing law provides that where the fees exceed $6.000 the Commissioner of Naturalization may make an additional allowance. but that the Commissioner of Naturalization has been reluctant to do because that may not come out of the fees but must come out of his appropriation. as the fees are covered into the Treasury. So the clerk of our court has not been able to secure anything over $3.000 though the actual cost much exceeds that amount. The bill I introduced was to amend the existing law so that the clerk of my county could receive (and it applies to some of the other large counties adjacent to the large cities where clerks of State courts render the same service) up to the limit of $6.000. I will say frankly to the House and to the members of the committee. this bill in no way meets the situation in my county and will grant no relief to the taxpayers of my county. because. in order to be operative as the bill has been introduced by the chairman of the Committee on Naturalization. the fees collected must aggregate $30.000 before the clerk can receive $6.000. As a matter of fact. that is a prohibitive limit. We are not collecting currently. and have no prospect of collecting anything like $30.000 in my county of Westchester.