Speech #720171912

I have no desire at all to discuss this amendment at length. but there already exist acts of the Congress of the United States making the distinction between those eligible to citizenship and those ineligible to citizenship in the matter of our immigration laws. Of course. there is no offense intended toward any race in thus doing. We follow the precedent that is more than a hundred years old in this country. We have used the language that we used more than a century ago in the statutes of the United States. and we seek here. inasmuch as we are dealing with the subject of the immigration of Filipinos to the mainland. to use in respect to them the language that has been used in respect to other races that were ineligible to citizenship. There is no distinction that is invidious that is made thus. there is no offense that is intended. and none that can be justly or logically inferred from the language. But it is that we may prevent some other peoples. perhaps. who say that in this bill a distinction is made. from insisting that our exclusion laws already in operation shall be in some fashion changed. modified. or eliminated. that we seek to use in this measure the language that has been employed in other measures of like sort.