Speech #820201784

This is in substance what he said. In reference to the indiscriminate entry of aliens it should be remembered that the Attorney General of the United States recently stated that an analysis of 4.984 of the more militant members of the Communist Party in the United States showed that 91.4 percent of the total were of foreign stock or were married to persons of foreign stock. I admit that many of our finest citizens are persons who came to our land as immigrants. But I have observed that a great percentage of our lawless and communistically inclined persons are of foreign stock. When our country was young. immigration brought us almost exclusively Europeans whose ideals were of those of western Christian civilization. these people were instrumental in subduing and settling our frontiers. they wished to conform to rather than modify or supplant the body of traditions and ideals summed up in the word America. From about 1880. our immigration shifted sharply to include millions of persons from southern and eastern Europe. Most of these people were less sympathetic to the ideals of the United States and a very large portion of them were nonChristians who had no intention whatever of accepting the ideals of western Christian civilization. but had purposes of their own. These purposes were accomplished by infiltration. propaganda. and electoral and financial pressure. The average American was not aware of what was going on and remained undisturbed. One reason for largescale Communist exploitation of the United States was our traditional lack of laws prohibiting or regulating immigration into the United States and our negligence or politics in enforcing immigration laws when they had been passed. There is ample evidence that there is an alarmingly large number of aliens in the United States in an illegal status. Under the alien registration act of 1940 some 5.000.000 aliens were registered. Some of these are fine persons but since we had no record of them it is safe to say that if they came in illegally they would probably always feel inclined to show little respect for our laws and might readily affiliate with subversive elements. I remember that about 20 years ago I visited a district immigration inspectors office in one of the larger cities of Texas and was advised that at that time they were holding a large number of aliens who had entered illegally but that they were going to be compelled to turn them loose because they did not have funds to deport them nor to feed them. Those of us who believe in keeping out of our country all undesirables and in admitting only the number that we can assimilate into our body politic we should be more inclined to listen to the immigration officials who are trying to do their duty than to the people who are advocating the admission of all classes of people without regard to morals. health. patriotism. or national welfare. Likewise. we should not be too anxious to admit those groups that are constantly protesting and claiming unfair treatment while statistics show that for 7 years. from 1937 to 1943. these groups produced from 25 to 77 percent of our total immigration. Again I say we should be careful.