Speech #770110959

The other provision that was criticized in the committee and has been criticized here on the floor is the one with reference to setting up a new commission of three men to administer the law. I am convinced that the personnel of the Department of Justice is adequate to handle the job. They will simply act as a parole board for aliens who have been ordered deported for illegal entry or minor offenses. If you will look at the report you will see that the proposed commission is given the power to require aliens to appear for identification and examination. require the aliens to submit to medical and psychiatric examination. supervise their activities. and enforce such restrictions as the Immigration Service may prescribe. In effect. it is an effort to keep aliens whose deportation has been ordered under surveillance so that they may be seized and deported when world conditions make it possible. That is not a very arduous task. and I do not see any reason for setting up a new Government agency to perform it. The Attorney General or the Commissioner of Immigration Is capable of administering the act. and the immigration agents scattered throughout the United States can do the actual parole work. I think that provision ought to come out. but if it stays In the bill. I believe the employees should be put under the provisions of the Civil Service Act. You on the majority side pay lip service here to civil service but pass bill after bill which ignores the merit system. The principal feature of this bill. to my mind. is the one about which there was considerable question in my mind a year or 2 years ago when a similar bill was being considered. I mean the provision which permits the Bureau of Immigration to detain indefinitely aliens who have been convicted of serious crimes. This might mean for life. The wording is that they may be detained until satisfactory arrangements have been made for their deportation. and that deportation may never be arranged. may never be realized. The gentleman from Alabama stated that there was a difference between more detention in connection with deportation and incarceration at hard labor. I am beginning to come to his point of view. in fact I have arrived at it. It seems to me the detention provision in this bill is in the nature of a quarantine.