Mr. PATTEN. Oh, that was between 1789 and 1850. It was about 1890 that the millions began to come that confuse some way or other antirestrictionists into talking about our doors having always been wide open to all the rest of the wide world, when the reverse is true right from the very start. Between 1890 and the World War from seventeen to twenty-five million aliens came, depending upon whether you classify alien entrants by their mental intent to remain permanently or not at the time of entry. The debates in Congress and the House reports accompanying the bill show that the Immigration Act of February 5, 1917, was passed and supplemented by the temporary numerical restriction law of 1921, in turn supplanted by the permanent quota numerical restriction law of 1924, were all passed to prevent the influx of the millions of World War refugees that threatened literally to inundate us as a result of the World War and devastated Europe.

It was the prospect largely of all these millions of World War refugees, most of whom were born in countries where there is not today even a semblance of self-government, that caused us, as shown by the official contemporaneous sources, to put up the bars numerically against Europeans. Since the enactment of the law of 1924 over 42 millions aliens have entered the United States legally. As to how many have entered illegally, anyone is entitled to an opinion, but there is ground for assuming that since 1930 perhaps almost as many enter surreptitiously as enter legally.

The spokesmen for the Department of Labor some years ago used always to insist before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations that they should have more and more money and larger and larger appropriations on account of the alien problem.

Several years ago I brought to the attention of the House Immigration Committee in connection with urged legislation that these same spokesmen always represented to the legislating committee of the House that there is no immigration problem and no need of any more legislation; but told the Appropriations Committee more and more money was needed to cope with the increasing immigration problem. Since that was called to their attention there seem to have been no more such representations before the Appropriations Committee. The hearings of the House committee show that they were told of the thousands smuggling aliens caught red-handed and the thousands of dollars' worth of automobiles, boats, airplanes, and the like apprehended smuggling aliens into the country. Such arguments seem to have disappeared recently since they were quoted before the House Immigration Committee.

Mr. HOUGHTELING. Might I make a comment at this point?
Senator HERRING. Yes.

Mr. HOUGHTELING. It might be of interest to note that the policy has been adopted in recent years whereby the executive departments apply to the Bureau of the Budget, and the Bureau of the Budget decides what appropriations they may ask for. In presenting themselves before the Committee on Appropriations the executive departments are limited to the decision of the Bureau of the Budget. I do not think the reason stated by this witness why we did not apply for more money before the Committee on Appropriations is the correct

reason.

I

Mr. PATTEN. I did not mean to say that was the only reason. submitted that information to the committee, and I want to suggest the plea of the Director of the Budget [who was in existence at the time and before I quoted what was said] and the House Appropriation hearings contain a veritable mine of information with reference to the need of additional legislation along the lines of the Reynolds bills.

Mr.HOUGHTELING. Might I make a further comment?
Senator HERRING. Yes.

Mr. HOUGHTELING. Something was said about automobiles. At the numerous ports of entry from Canada which are on public highways, the work of our Service is almost entirely distinct and separate from the question of controlling immigration into the United States. Our problem there is to control temporary visitors, the number of whom has greatly increased on account of improved methods of transportation from that country.

Mr. PATTEN. I think there is no question about that. There were something like 50,000,000 border crossings last year. I do not now recall the exact number, but last year there must have been about 30,000,000 alien border crossings on both the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Mr. SHAUGHNESSY. May I correct that statement? Last year there were 52,000,000 border crossings.

Mr. PATTEN. I said about 50,000,000, and understated the number. Mr. SHAUGHNESSY. You must distinguish between the aliens and alien border crossings. The same alien that comes here to work every day is perhaps checked 300 times in that 1 year. So those 30,000,000 do not represent the number of different aliens entering the country.

Mr. PATTEN. I beg your pardon. I did not mean to say every crossing was by a different person. I said "border crossings."

Senator HOLMAN. You were talking about the volume of business. Mr. PATTEN. I said the statistics showed something like 50,000,000 personal border crossings, and every border crossing is a possible surreptitious entry.

Senator HERRING. There is always a chance for that.

Mr. PATTEN. They are catching illegal entrants every day. They are catching them concealed in hayracks, in automobiles, sewed up in burlap bags, nailed up in boxes, and the like according to both Chairman Dickstein and Congressman Schulte, and other members of the House Immigration Committee in statements made to the House Immigration Committee on March 1, 1939, and to the House Rules Committee on March 7, in favor of a House resolution ordering an investigation of alien smuggling that was favorably reported to the House on March 7, 1939.

Senator HERRING. Who is doing that?

Mr. PATTEN. Largely the border patrol.

Senator HERRING. Then they are making some effort?

Mr. PATTEN. Yes, indeed. There is some difference in the statements made before the House Rules Committee on March 7 and statements before the House Immigration Committee, on March 1 about alien smuggling and alien smugglers. Unfortunately, I was not here when Mr. Warren spoke, but I believe our consuls abroad have information, or can get it, that will show there are millions who would come if we

were to relax our present inadequate laws or even its present L. P. C. rigid enforcement. I have not seen a recent estimate, although I know there must have been one at the close of last year. I recall several years ago an incomplete survey was made by the Department of State, through its consuls abroad, that revealed in the neighborhood of a million annual potential applicants for immigration visas, or about 990,000 aliens that would come annually if the L. P. C. enforcement merely was relaxed. No doubt the Department of State has a more recent estimate.

Mr. WARREN. We have figures showing the number registered to come to the United States for permanent residence.

Senator HERRING. Will you submit those figures to us?
Mr. WARREN. Yes.

(The figures referred to are here set forth as follows:)

Mr. PATTEN. The Commissioner yesterday suggested that there were not "millions of aliens that could come" if they could get into the United States. The Department of State as a result of surveys abroad has repeatedly reported an annual million, as I understand, of potential applicants for immigration visas with any return in L. P. C. enforcement back to the administration prior to September 1930.

The point I wish to suggest is that immigration restriction, and even immigration exclusion by "We, the people of the United States" is no new thing. It dates back to at least 1787, when our Constitution was written by the founding fathers. I refer not only to the power vested in Congress to absolutely exclude all aliens, but the specific prohibition in Constitution that on and after 1808 no more African slaves could be imported or allowed to enter the United States.

Senator REYNOLDS. That was the first immigration law.

Mr. PATTEN. That was our first exclusion act and more than a law for Congress cannot repeal or modify it.

Senator REYNOLDS. The Constitution is the law.

Mr. PATTEN. Exclusion is specifically a part of the Constitution, and that exclusion can only be repealed or amended by a constitutional amendment.

Senator REYNOLDS. And that was the first reference to it.

Mr. PATTEN. The power to exclude was also vested in Congress, and the States were denied the right to have anything to do with it. Senator REYNOLDS. That was the initial exclusion act?

Mr. PATTEN. Yes, sir. Again, half a century ago, when California began to seeth with anti-Chinese riots, Congress put up the exclusion bars against almost one-fifth of the world's population known then as the Chinese Empire.

Senator HOLMAN. And incidentally, the Chinese are a peaceful, law-abiding, industrious, and loyal people. I am not saying we are any better or any worse, but the fact of the matter is, no two races can live together.

Mr. PATTEN. They can survive on food, clothing, and shelter our people cannot survive on, and our people will not bring children into the world if they have to compete with coolies for a living.

Senator HOLMAN. That is right.

Mr. PATTEN. In 1882 we absolutely forbade the entry of any more Chinese for permanent residence. We did not do it because we said we were better than they, but because they were different from us. As a matter of fact they are superior to us, at least in that they can survive on wages and conditions of work and subsistence that we cannot survive on. Yet witnesses will come here, and even spokesmen for the departments, and intimate that it is almost un-American to exclude anybody. There are those who appear and argue, and their arguments must have the ratio decendi, that aliens should be allowed to come and let it be a survival of the fittest to survive. I do not share any such un-American philosophy. I cannot help agreeing with the author of these bills, Senator Reynolds, that first things should come first, and that first things are Americans, native born and naturalized, and then aliens here rather than aliens in some foreign land and then all the nonrelatives of aliens already here before aliens not here or who happen to have some inadmissible relatives in some foreign land.

Something has been said about race and religion. May I suggest as a former distinguished member of this committee, Hon. David A. Reed, has so well said, that it does not take a philosopher or a soothsayer to tell that an Arab, who has lived under a patriarchal government in which he has never even taken a whispering part, is not really qualified to fit into our system of self-government, and that given enough Arabs, Eskimos, Hottentots, or Chinese, as well as some others, we will have a citizenship quite incapable of continuing this form of government and these institutions that our ancestors erected and we are trying to maintain, and which I tried to say yesterday seem to me such a rich heritage and so worth trying to hand down to posterity. Why are wages from 4 to 40 times higher and working conditions so much better here than they are in any other land? We have three-fourths the automobiles, two-thirds the telephones and most of the radios, electric refrigerators, washing machines and the like. This is the only land where it is possible for a lad without anything to become a Henry Ford, an Edison, a Chrysler, or for a country grocerystore clerk at $3 a week to become a John D. Rockefeller by industry, thrift and innate ability. The answer is not our material resources, for many other countries have far greater material resources. It seems to me it is because our population in the past has been largely made up of a class of people more readily assimilable into our representative institutions than many aliens from most foreign countries. The real protest here against legislating for America and Americans comes entirely from welfare workers among foreign born, who, it does seem to me, with all due respect for and appreciation of the splendid work they are doing, should confine their efforts to their real tasks. They have impressed me before with wanting to import poverty for the sake of exercising benevolence. Naturally they take a pride in their profession. It seems to me the condition of the poor sharecroppers and mountaineers caused by an unfortunate slave immigration ought to make them restrictionists.

Senator HERRING. The slavery question has been pretty well settled, I think.

Mr. PATTEN. But we still have and always will have some of its consequences with us and anyway, we have its lessons as a guide.

I do not mean to be unfair, but I have gotten sick and tired of hearing Americans like Senator Reynolds denounced as prejudiced, as “a man