Speech #720013197

This section provides for the appointment of a permanent international economic conference to consider all questions affecting international commerce and international business relations. The tariff is one of those things. Immigration is another thing that has as direct and as important a bearing on the trade relations and the economic relations of our country as any other feature of the tariff. All through the immigration act and throughout all the history of immigration legislation the economic theory is the one that has been brought to the front. There are two reasons for that: One is the maintenance of certain moral forces and standards which we may have. and the other is truly economic. In the immigration law we undertake to give protection to the commodities which the laboring man produces and to protect him from the unfair competition of other dountries. This is the first time I have ever heard the suggestion made that the immigration law did not have anything to do with economics. This section is broad. and it shows the general purpose and scope that was intended by the committee when they put in the bill a provision to the effect that there should be no discussion of the war debts. In other words. it may be assumed that when the committee reported section 4 they intended this international economic conference to have the power to consider everything that had any bearing on international commerce except one thing. and that was the war debts. As the bill now stands. this conference. if organized. has the right to consider the question of immigration. Why did the committee place a provision in this bill barring the consideration of war debts? I assume for the simple reason that it had a bearing on economic conditions. and also for the reason that it is a onesided question. and that there was not anything in that question that the United States could afford to submit to arbitration. I submit that the question of immigrationwhich is of far more importance to the economic future of our country than a matter of a few billions of dollars--is a question that is onesided. There is not anything that we have to trade on the question of the restriction of immigration. Our citizens are not wanting to leave. but the entire world is coming here or wants to come. Therefore there is not anything that we can trade on the question of immigration. I submit to the Chair that this amendment is germane. and unless the Chair can say and is of the opinion that the restriction of immigration has not anything to do with the economic condition of our country. with our trade relations. and with the commerce of the world. he must hold the amendment in order.