Speech #800042603

Mr. Speaker. there has been so much confusion and so many misstatements with regard to immigration practices. aliens. and displaced persons. that it is time to have the true picture open for inspection by Members of Congress. The State Department. the" Department of Justice. and the wellinformed are fully aware of the conspiracy of distortion and misrepresentation which has been launched to confuse the public and bedevil Congress on this subject. Richard C. Raymond. adviser to the Department of State on displaced persons. recently statcd: We are concerned about a lot of false propaganda that is going around about the displaced persons. There is so much of it that there almost seems to be a campaign behind it. In the last issue of the Monthly Review of the Immigration and Naturalization ServiceMarch 1947Commissioner Carusi exposes some of the false stories about immigration in an editorial entitled "Rumor Versus Fact." Earlier this year Earl Harrison. former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization -Service and dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. said: Right now. there seems to have been launched a campaign of misrepresentation and distortion concerning immigration into the United States. Mr. Speaker. I should- like to disclose and expose this campaign of misrepresentation and to take up point by point each count of this conspiracy of distortion. Count 1 of the conspiracy consists of the false propaganda that hundreds of thousands. and even millions. of refugees are entering the country illegally. A reputable news magazine recently stated that illegal entries were skyrocketing. that foreigners caught entering the country under false pretenses are now at a rate of 170.000 a year. and it implied that this number consisted entirely of refugees. There have also been newspaper editorials and articles which have been repeated and spread upon the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD to the effect that 2.000 aliens enter the country illegally 1.947 every day. And here again an attempt is made to convey the thought that these are refugees seeking illegal entry into the United States from European shores. Commissioner Carus! answers this oftrepeated falsehood as follows: Rumors repeatedly infer that millions of European refugees are crossing our borders illegally. These rumors may stem from the fact that many Mexicans are illegally crossing the southern border of the United States in quest of work. These illegal Mexican entrants are being apprehended and returned to Mexico by the immigration border patrol at the rate of 15.000 per month. If we may judge from protests that we are receiving from the area along the Mexican border. our expulsions of Mexicans are depleting the labor supply to an extent which may exceed the current rate of illegal entries. Be that as it may. these people are neither Europeans nor refugees. Attempted illegal entries from the European area are less than 100 per month. most of these aliens are stowaways who arrive on vessels in groups of from 2 to 10. Practically every one of these stowaways is apprehended by the captain of the vessel before he reaches port and Is then turned over to our officers at the pier.