Speech #720165814

If they were here. this sum of money would not be sent abroad but would be used right here in the United States for the purchase of their wants and distribution amongst our people instead. So that instead of preventing prospective laborers from coming to the United States. the American consuls are preyenting American families from being united. I for one would rather see the union of a few families in the United States than a thousand criminal aliens running loose throughout the country. some of whom should be deported but who are not. If these alien criminals were deported and in their stead lawabiding members of families permitted to come into this country it would immediately create better conditions and bring about happiness to many homes. I believe if our people were apprised of the real situation they would learn how incorrect it is to say that the action of our American consuls abroad is beneficial to our people. Quite the contrary. Not a single person is kept out of this country as a competition with our labor conditions. but the many thousands who seek to come to the United States but who are denied admission on the plea of public charge would be coming to this country and become consumers of our American goods and permit our citizens to obtain work where now they can not. - It is essential for us to know that the assumption of Czarlike powers by consuls abroad who arbitrarily say who shall or shall not obtain a visa only results in the breaking up of home ties of American families. The State Department is taking no action to reverse the inhuman denials of visas to these relatives and has placed no rule or standard by which Consuls can be guided in this method of conduct relating to the issuance of visas. We are leaving this grave human problem in the hands of men. many of whom have lost what Mr. Rudyard Kipling so aptly described as the "common touch." To illustrate what I have said before I am making reference to a letter addressed to the New York Times by a former member of the Diplomatic Service of the United States. who on the date of April 24 says as follows: Many appeals were made to me to intervene in favor of people .who had every claim to visas. The Diplomatic Service is powerless. The people who seek entry into our country are entirely at the mercy of the consular officers. Perhaps some of the latter are good and worthy. but others are lacking not only in tact and humility but even in a sense of justice. What is the administration going to do about it? During the session of Congress just adjourning extensive hearings were held before appropriate committees on bills proposing a method of appeal to Washington by citizens. legal alien residents. and their relatives abroad in cases where an American consul had withheld or refused an immigration visa after a petition had been approved by the Department of Labor in behalf of such relatives abroad. This proposition met with very strenuous opposition by the State Department under this Republican administration. so that I am convinced that the question of facilitating the reunion of families In the United States will receive no genuine. bona fide assistance from the socalled restrictionists. because their whole argument centers around the inviolate maintenance of the quota plan and insist that any union of families shall be accomplished by adjustments within the quotas. but at the same time they demand as a prerequisite before they give concurrence in any genuine relief measures the almost total elimination of all quotas. They. of course. know but apparently Ignore the fact that their plan of reduction of the quotas also reduces the number of families united by reduced number of near relatives admitted within the quotas. Their plan offers no genuine reunion of families now separated by the operation of our quota system. Current information given me from the State Department shows that for the year ending June 30. 1932. during which time the nationalorigins provisions of the immigration law would have provided for the issuance of 153.831 immigration visas to quota immigrants. there were issued less than 4.500 immigration visas to nonpreferencequota immigrants. whereas the reports issued for the year ending June 30. 1931. show there were issued 26.833 nonpreferencequota immigration visas. this indicates a radical reduction of about 83 per cent or more of these immigration visas issued to socalled newblood immigrantsthat is. immigrants with no previously established family ties in the United States. So in conclusion I wish to emphasize the fact that the records clearly show that the American consuls abroad. acting upon directions or instructions from the Department of State with the tacit approval of the present Chief Executive. under the Republican administration. in their zeal to reduce the number of immigration visas issued by their respective consular offices by the strict application of the presumption that an alien applicant for a visa is liable to be a person "likely to become a public charge." have kept apart more families of American citizens and more families of resident aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States than they have kept out of the United States socalled newblood immigration. So that the present Republican administration should immediately put into operation some administrative order which will facilitate a bona fide reunion of families. Whenever the alien member of the family is able to fully qualify otherwise for admission under our immigration laws the family resources in the United States should be considered. and constitute a prima facie presumption by the consul that the alien applicant is not a person liable to be held as "likely to become a public charge."