SUBMITTED BY JAMES J. LANZETTA CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The CHAIRMAN COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION, Mr. CHAIRMAN: The other day I made the statement that inasmuch as some of us considered that the United States was depopulated, and that our present population could not consume all that we produced, that some intelligent consideration should be given to the question of whether our problem of overproduction could be eliminated by increasing the population of the United States by new immigation. In connection with my statement I wish to include in the record an editorial entitled "Again: Bring in More People ", which appeared in the Daily News of New York City on Saturday, May 12, 1934. AGAIN BRING IN MORE PEOPLE JAMES J. LANZETTA. The Immigration Restriction League, of Boston, which, as you may infer, is against loosening our immigration laws by so much as a single notch, has sent us a copy of an article by one Prof. Thomas Nixon Carver on the dangers of letting any more people come into this country, as the professor sees those dangers. Professor Carver says in part: "Who are the opponents of restriction? First * * * there are the unscrupulous revolutionists who are willing to see the labor market glutted in order that workers may have both the motive and the power to bring about a revolution. Second, there are the unscrupulous employers who want cheap labor in their factories, mines, and plantations. "Third, there are well-meaning but emotional people who are more moved by sympathy for a single individual who is excluded than for the whole mass of American workers who are benefited by restriction. "Fourth, there are well-meaning people in comfortable circumstances who are mislead by such words as 'generous' and 'liberal.' They speak benignly about being generous to the poor of other lands by letting them come here to share in our bounty." There must be a fifth class, because we're in favor of opening up the immigration laws to let in from 10,000,000 to 25,000,000 people at the rate of about 1,000,000 a year, yet we don't come under any of the four heads the professor lists. We base our advocacy of immigration in prewar quantities on mathematical reasoning chiefly. WALLACE'S VIEW OF IT Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has said that we are producing too much of every kind of farm goods because we speeded up farm production during the war to fill the gaps in the world's food supply left by the men who went to fight and by the lands that were forced out of cultivation. Since the war every nation has been striving to become self-sufficient-meaning the markets for our surplus farm goods have been and are shrinking. We must therefore, as Mr. Wallace also points out, either take those excess lands out of production or find foreign markets by means of trade agreements or drop all our tariffs and let every kind of product come in here duty free to fight it out with home products, hoping other nations will also drop their tariffs. 213 HOME GOODS, HOME USERS As we see it, that is a choice between three roundabout and very dubious ways of finding some 10,000,000 to 25,000,000 more mouths and bodies to consume our farm surpluses. Why not bring those mouths here to eat the surplus the way we did in our most expansive decades as a nation? What applies to farm products applies as well to the goods our factories make. Right now we make more than the people here can use. So we do our best to sell our manufactured surplus abroad. What chance have we to increase our foreign markets? The interesting series of articles by Lowell Limpus on Japan's conquest of world trade proved that our chances are very slim indeed. One fact Limpus unearthed stands out as proof. A Japanese textile worker gets 321⁄2 cents for a full 10-hour day, or all of $1.95 a week for 60 hours of labor. Under the NRA code the lowest paid American textile worker gets a minimum of $11 a week. If a Japanese manufacturer has to spend only $1.95 to the American manufacturer's $11 for labor (which in most cases is more than half the total cost of a manufactured commodity), how can our textile makers hope to undersell the Japanese in foreign markets? The answer is simple-they can't. What would be the result if we had 10,000,000 to 25,000,000 more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe here? MARKETED FOOD TURNS WHEELS The first thing a man wants when he gets off a boat is generally a meal. The immigrants would begin eating up our farm surplus as soon as they arrived. That would mean more money for the farmers. They'd begin buying more clothes (textiles), and they'd spend their money on automobiles, telephones, and plumbing conveniences, which only a very small percentage of American farmers have. The net result would be the balanced national economy toward which Wallace says we must work if we want to keep and raise the American standard of living. If we're wrong, then Wallace is wrong. We think that Wallace is right and that a lot of people should be brought here to balance things up in this underpopulated and out-of-plumb country. SUBMITTED BY R. M. BRADLEY 60 STATE STREET, BOSTON, MASS., May 10, 1934. Washington, D. C. TO THE COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, GENTLEMEN: Having attended your hearing on behalf of the Immigration Restriction League of Boston, I did not feel the need of taking your time by speaking. I beg, however, to call the following to your attention: Study of bill no. 9518 shows that it gives a latitude for the admission of aliens at the discretion of a single person--namely, the Secretary of Labor— that would hardly be tolerated if understood. Mandatory provision for deportation are apparently repealed and the way cleared for new provisions in substitution. Section 5A then provides as follows: "The Secretary of Labor is authorized to order by warrant the deportation of aliens found by him to be subject to deportation under this or any other act." (Please observe the wide effect of the last three words.) This pro vision for the deportation of all aliens under any act is qualified in the same paragraph. (This inclusion in the same paragraph manifestly links up these qualifications with all deportation provisions under any previous act of Congress.) The qualifications so linked up provide that: "He may at his discretion allow an otherwise deportable alien to remain in the United States if he is of good moral character and if he has not been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude and has not engaged in subversive political agitation or conduct and if he Then follow certain positive qualifications for retention including: Continuous living in the United States for 10 years, and admission under 15, under certain circumstances. But the most extraordinary qualification for retention is as follows: "The alien may be retained in the United States permanently no matter how he got in if he has living in the United States a near relative who has been lawfully admitted for permanent residence or is a citizen of the United States.'" This provision can have no other effect than to make lawful by the approval of one person, the retention within the United States of any person whatever, no matter how unlawfully he got in, whether he be Caucasian, African, Chinese, Japanese, or Malay, no matter if he be diseased or epileptic or insane, provided that he has some relative already lawfully admitted (possibly admitted under this very provision, or resident in jail or asylum). He may be so retained, provided only that the candidate for permanent residence in the United States is not positively known to be immoral or to have been engaged in subversive political agitation or conduct. The latitude for admission under this bill is simply infinite, and it is inconceivable that once its character is evident either to your committee or to the country at large that it will be tolerated. Other provisions in these bills are equally objectionable, but I judge that these objections have the attention of your members. Your obedient servant, R. M. BRADLEY. P. S. These bills are evidently not drawn by the real friends of reasonable restriction but by persons who, whatever their good intentions, are blinded by the fact that they are unable to perceive anything but the bearing of present laws on a limited number of individual cases regardless of the protection afforded by those laws to millions of our people for whom such protection is necessary. Many of these persons have a record of strenuous opposition to all measures giving any specific or effective restriction. None of them, so far as we know, has ever given to any important measure of this kind any substantial help. These measures which profess to clarify the immigration act and enact restriction are practically a repeal of effective restriction and put the protection of the livelihood of millions of our people at the discretion of some of restriction's most active enemies. It is a question whether under the circumstances there should be any discretion at all. There is no question as to putting it in these hands. The protection of your countrymen's most vital interest lies up to you. SUBMITTED BY PATRICK L. QUINLAN Hon. SAMUEL DICKSTEIN, MAY 30, 1934. Chairman Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, DEAR CONGRESSMAN: Thanks for your courteous reply to my inquiry. Since as you state there can be no further hearings on the immigration bills, I am, per your suggestion, putting my views in writing with the hope that some good, even at this late date, be accomplished. Yours truly, 226 ST. JAMES PLACE, Brooklyn, N. Y. PATRICK L. QUINLAN. Mr. Chairman and Honorable Members of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration: I have to thank you for the courtesy extended me in permitting me to present my views on Immigration in writing. In doing so I want to say that I appreciate the fine qualities and the good intentions of all those who have advocated a more liberal interpretation of our immigration laws. No one deplores unnecessary hardship as applied to immigrants more than I do. But liberal interpretation of existing laws and a lifting of the bars that metaphorically guard our ports of entry are two different things. Therefore I say that we should not allow sentiment to blind us or to swerve us into doing something that we later on would have every reason to regret. I have made an exhaustive study of the immigration question and have examined it from all angles. While so doing I also studied the advocates pro and contra of immigration as it applies to the United States of America. Sentiment and selfishness obtain on both sides, and one finds most of them reveal that they have only a superficial knowledge of the subject. Some are clever with reparte or riddicule when dealing with their respective opponents. Most if not all dodge the question fundamentally. Immigration: Three divisions or categories. In the first place the sentimentalists rarely concern themselves with the immigrant himself. Yet he is the first person involved. The second is the country he leaves-I mean origin or native land. Third; the country where he arrives to make his new home. All figures consulted in possession of city and State and Federal authorities reveal that the immigrant is anything but a success in this country. I am not referring to colonial times or the half a century of post-revolutionary period when the country was filling up so to speak. I am referring to the immigrant, roughly speaking, say, from 1880 down to the present. City figures for New York, Chicago, Boston, and other cities where the bulk of our immigrants flock to and stay after arrival show that 50 percent of all immigrants, regardless of nationality, become economic failures; 25 percent barely keep their "head above water"; 15 percent become moderately successful; and only 10 percent reach the pinnacle of security and wealth. We hear about the latter 10 percent all of the time, but we don't hear much or anything of the failures that fill our hospitals, public institutions, prisons, bread lines, or of those that live by cutting the feet from under American workers in the economic struggle to live, survive, and keep going. Anyone interested in this last phase of the immigration question can consult the social statistics of the New York City and State institutions. I have come to the conclusion that the majority of immigrants would have been far better off spiritually, socially, and economically had they stayed in their own or native countries. Now, how about the countries the immigrants leave. It is one of the outstanding facts of modern history that countries which retain their people and have little emigration to other lands are politically and economically successful. They are the most advanced. The classic countries that illustrate this point are France and Ireland. The former has had scarcely no emigration out, though it has had some come in since the war-though only on restricted conditions. No one needs to worry you gentlemen with a recital of France's accomplishments and achievements in industry or of its art, culture, and of its being the backbone of European democracy. The people of France stay at home and fight it out, improve legislation, hold hard to their political freedom, and develop a prosperity that in soundness and in distribution is second to none. In the case of Ireland we find its people used to leave it in thousands until there were more Irish in New York, Chicago, Boston, London than in Cork or Dublin. While so doing the Irish were leaving behind them many and large and complex problems unsolved. As old people-and Erin was unproportionately full of them-do not as a rule work for great changes, politically or socially, the country slipped backward behind the nations it once led. In fact, it came to my knowledge several years ago when in Ireland that the foreign or semiforeign aristocrats had the habit of encouraging local agitators in country or rural districts to go to America. They paid the passage of land agitators to get rid of them so that they could continue their lives of idleness, ease, luxury, sport. Immigration from Ireland to United States and Canada had eased up long before the war and during the bellum, post-bellum period Irish immigration ceased altogether. Since then Ireland has made great strides and most wonderful progress in drama, farming, electricity, poetry, culture. Politically it has almost achieved complete sovereignty. None of these things would have been gained by the Irish had they not stayed at home and fought it out with their internal and external enemies. The German emigration following the failure of the 1848 revolution is another classic example of the mischief wrought by emigration. Since then everything in Germany from a political point of view is done by halves. Its democracy failed and while not entirely due to the 1848 wave that come here that factor did contribute its share. Russia gives us another instance of people staying at home and getting rid of their troubles. Australia is one country that rigidly handles the immigrant and it is prosperous and has none of the troubles that countries with the extremes of revolution or reaction suffer from. Spain is the latest example of a people who stopped running away and stayed home and solved their problems. Spain has made progress since its people ceased to look to Mexico, Cuba, and the Philippine Islands for relief. Uncle Sam only hampers progress when he permits nationals from other lands to settle here. The age of colonization is gone, its glory is at an end. The third and last category is the immigrant in this country. I have spent several years knocking around the world. I am in fact something of a globe trotter. Which is another way of saying when I have the money saved I go to some new country and study it first-hand.. Ireland, Great Britain, France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, the coast of China cities, Australia, South Africa, and the Argentine. Was the first American citizen in Russia following the Bolshevik coup de'etat. Saw the latter country in its best red days and its worst during the famine. I have seen none with social standards or conditions to match ours and because of that most of the immigrants have a tendency to work for standards lower than those obtaining in this country. Climate here is so different that even were the immigrants to gravitate into our standards earlier than they do it would still play an important part in the promotion of sickness, tubercular and other serious forms or kinds of disease so prevalent among immigrants. It takes too long to make immigrants Americans. That applies to even our British and Canadian, cousins. A large part of them never become citizens. In the matter of work it inevitably develops race and national troubles when a large number of Europeans, even of one nationality, become employed in an industry. Unconsciously it has a tendency to drive out the Americans, and soon we see the foreigner monopolizing employment in certain industries. It has a more vicious effect in that in time the American won't work at all at some trades or in some industries because of the large number of foreigners engaged therein. Thus they develop an absurd superiority complex or they degenerate into conditions of life with lower standards and even physique than the immigrants. If the honorable members of this committee will go about this country and keep their eyes open they will find where there are few or no immigrants at work in any given industry one finds no work, no matter how poorly paid or menial, turned down or despised by the Americans. Negro sections do not apply to this generalization. The question of religious or politically persecuted immigrants may be drawn into the discussion. I believe where it can be definitely and clearly proved that an immigrant is the victim of political persecution some means or measures should be devised to meet such special cases. Political persecution should not simply mean the triumph of one party over another. I think Mr. West's H. R. bill 9780 is not clear enough. The intent should be made plainer. I believe the class of immigrants referred to in Representative West's bill could be given the benefit of legality without making them eligible for citizenship. They could be classed as alien residents entitled to live here and return home without trouble for vacations as alien residents are allowed to do now. Representative Dickstein's H. R. bill, at least section 3, is too loosely drawn and gives too much discretion to the Secretary of Labor. The bill otherwise is admirable. It only does what the European governments do to Americans for lesser offences. In fact chiefs of police in most European cities can order an American out of town for no cause at all. Other chiefs will follow suit and without getting actual governmental orders he has to leave the country. He can't demand a trial. No review of case when foreigner is ordered deported. I thank you gentlemen. PATRICK L. QUINLAN. |