Speech #780191177

It will protect against unemployment in this country. Is the one who wrote in the pamphlet that I have introduced a vicious bill a better friend of the American working man than I am? If he is. why does he advocate the continued flow of foreign immigrants to he dumped upon the soil of America to add to the seriousness of our employment problem such as we will certainly face in the days when the war shall have ended? I want the American people to be employed. I want to see them given the first chance and the first opportunity to receive employment here in the United States of America. That is my reason for introducing the bill. Mr. President. the authorz of the pamphlet say my bill is a part of the antialien campaign and would tend to turn native born against foreign born and aliens. It would not do such a thing as to turn native born against foreign born. That is a strained construction. The authors of the pamphlet say that my bill "violates our traditions of sanctuary and asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of all nations." Mr. President. if I am not quite badly mistaken. when the war is over we shall all waken to the full and complete realization that it is about time for the United States of America to turn its full and complete attention to its own native citizens and to the building up in this country of one nation. one nation of people. instead of pampering a breed. here which undertakes to attack the Constitution upon which the four pillars of this Government rest and have securely rested throughout the onehundredandfiftyodd years of its existence. I think we will find when we shall have concluded this war that we have brought upon our shoulders greater burdens than we have hitherto known. burdens of .bonded debt. burdens of supporting the widows and the orphans created by the war. and we shall assume a responsibility the like of which we have never known and which we have never before experienced. and then indeed it will be time to close the gates to -foreign immigrants. Mr. President. we say we are fighting the war to preserve democracy. What do we preserve if we open the floodgates of immigration and permit people from foreign countries with whom we are now engaged in mortal combat to come here with their ideas which are utterly foreign to ours? The greatest enemy to .communism is" the American Constitution. which is being assailed by the proposed legislation which is being considered here. Yes.