Speech #780122604

The American Federation of Laboi takes that position because it represents millions of laborers in America. Inan article published not many months ago Mr. Green stated that after the war ends there will be millions upon millions of American citizens. nativeborn and naturalized. walking the streets in search of jobs they cannot find. I respectfully submit to my colleagues in this. the upper House of Congress. that it is our duty to preserve every single Jobone job or 105 jobs or millions of jobs. We should preserve those jobs for the men and women who return from the war. Today many of our uniformed men and women are giving their blood. laying down their lives. and dying in order that we may enjoy the American way of lifein this land. The propaganda for the passage of this legislation has been intense. but there are certain facts relating to the whole problem of Chinese exclusion which have not had the publicity their importance demands. First. attention must be called to the fact that the President in his message to Congress characterized the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the prohibition against the naturalization of Chinese as something which should never have taken place. The President further stated thatNations like individuals make mistakes. We must be big enough to acknowledge our mistakes of the past and to correct tbem. This seems an extraordinary pronouncement for the President to make. because had Congress not enacted the Chinese Exclusion Acts when it did. our country would now have on its hands a race problem. In fact. if Congress had not finally developed. the principle of Chinese exclusion into total Asiatic exclusion. our existing Japanese problem would have been so magnified as to constitute a grave military menace. The appalling nature of this menace is made perhaps more vivid if the statistics for the decade 193342 are analyzed. During this decade the British had available a total of 657.210 visas. Against this total. however. only 26.476 visas are charged. That leaves an unused balance of 630.734 visas. Had the United States not had in the immigration law a provision that persons ineligible to citizenship were not admissible. this unused balance of 630.734 would have been available for British subjects of Chinese descent whio were born in one or another of the British dependencies. such as Hong Kong. the Straits Settlements. and the Malay States. not to mention the West Indies. where a good many Chinese coolies have settled. Also. as immigration from the Western Hemisphere has never beea placed on a quota basis. the descendants of the large number of Chinese who were permitted to migrate Into various countries of Latin America could have moved here in a flood of indeterminable magnituude. When these facts were brought before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. the advocates of the policy of repealing Asiatic exclusion. so far as it applied to the Chinese. apparently realized that Congress. and the public at large when they understood the situation would not tolerate legislation of this character. Hence. House bill 3070. known as the Magnuson bill. is offered to the Congress as a measure to placate the Chinese and counteract the Japanese propaganda that our legislation Is discriminatory against our ally.