Speech #790035119

The committee feels that we should know more about this. That such accusations should be investigated and proper steps taken to deal with the situation. There are people who have resided in this country for a great number of years without bothering to become naturalized. There is legislation before our committee to punish such peopleto either deport them or to force their becoming naturalized. This seemingly unimportant little problem has a lot of ramifications as it involves treaties with other countries and. generally speaking. touches on our relationship with other nations and the rights of their nationals within our borders as well as our nationals within their borders. This problem will have to be studied from many angles before a satisfactory solution can be found. We have other serious problems before the committee which are so complicated and important that we feel it is for the best interest of the country to have a complete study made of the whole field of immigration and naturalization. Only recently we had a bill before us providing for a quota fo- and naturalization of East Indians. The President. the State Department. and the Justice Department urgently requested the enactment of this legislation but the committee by a vote of 10 to 6 tabled it. Some of the members voting against this legislation simply felt that we had not studied the whole field of socalled discriminatory immigration and naturalization laws sufficiently to act on it. They felt that we ought to study all the problems involved and not take any piecemeal action. The more hearings we had. the greater the scope of the problem appeared to be and. the more we heard. the more we became convinced that here was a complete phase of our immigration and naturalization policy we had to study very carefully to be able to cope with the presentday situation of nations and peoples coming of ageindustrially. economically. and politically and demanding the respect due them by other nations. Then we also have the problem of war prisoners now in our country. There are reports to the effect that some of them claim American citizenshipeither through their parents or by birth in this country.