Speech #710270637

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. there is pending in this Congress a measure which is of vital importance to the millions of Amertcans and their dependents who are suffering because of unemployment. The ReedJohnson immigration restriction bill offers the most logical and direct step toward securing substantial relief without placing an additional burden on the Public Treasury. This bill specifies a 90 per cent reduction of immigration from all countries. At the same time this bill provides for the uniting of families that are temporarily separated because of quota restrictions. Our present unemployment situation amply justifies such immigration reduction. It is essentially what Australia has done only within the last three weeks to meet a condition which is similar. but not nearly so serious as our own. Canada. for the same reason. has had a similar policy in effect for nearly a year. I might mention also that France. which until very recently needed and encouraged foreign immigrant labor. is now confronted with an unemployment problem. That country has had to put up the bars also. Moreover. both Canada and Australia have long ago effected the complete exclusion of all nonassimilable ifilmigrants even from those Asiatic sources within their own British Empire. Why. you may ask. do I cite the policies of Australia and Canada? It is because the wages and the living standards of their workingmen are nearly equal to those prevailing in the United States. because they are countries which were settled and built up by immigrants who came largely from the same European sources which helped to populate our own Nation. and because their laws and institutions are similar to ours. Both these countries have far less population to the square mile than we have. Their natural resources have not been developed to the same degree as have ours. These countries would for those reasons be expected to encourage immigration at all times. But their governments. always responsive to the needs of their working population. took immediate action in the present worldwide unemployment crisis. They also acted promptly to protect their workers from the disheartening competition of cheap Asiatic labor. For many years the selfish employers of those countries have not been allowed to avail themselves of such lowpaid labor and to let their fellow countrymen suffer for want of work. That part of our Nation bordering on the Pacific Ocean has always had to face the same immigration problems as have Australia and Canada. In our early days we experienced a distressing influx of Chinese. Later we suffered from an equally serious invasion from Japan.