be protected from itself. The people do not go against their own Government when it is a government. We are not afraid of them doing that. Jefferson took into account you could always depend on the people. There is no reason for you to protect the people from others you might consider a danger.

You remember in 1776, when this country faced a terrible crisis. The Declaration of Independence had been signed. We had gone to war to protect it. We were having reverses. The morale of the people went down, and it was a man by the name of Tom Paine. who was an alien, who spurred the people on and kept up their morale and guided them through this until our independence was absolute. And those ideas of that alien had already gone into the Declaration of Independence. Later on they went into the Bill of Rights. There were many people just then who considered him a dangerous radical. I think time has given him the proof. We consider the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as basic Americanism.

Therefore, we feel when you come to grips with a subject like this. it seems to be at variance with those principles that you must always know are not the easiest way; and if this bill is the logical outcome of our whole system of immigration laws, probably they had better be overhauled. Maybe we had better go back to the idea of welcoming everyone into this country because that was early Americanism.

Dangerous aliens and dangerous citizens are alike to be curbed in the ordinary way; but why make a difference? These curbs must naturally be, in themselves, more of a danger than any varying overt act which they are designed to prevent.

The Descendents of the American Revolution, however, have asked me to request of this committee that it give it the same unfavorable report that anxious patriots have already given it, and I would like to read, in closing, something which Abraham Lincoln said, to show you these things which we stand for, are not simply early Americanism; they were principles which had been called on every time this Government was in a crisis.

In a speech in Edwarsville, Ill., in 1858, he said this [reading]:

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, our Army and our Navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of these may be turned against us without making us weaker for a struggle. Our worthiness is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own door. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genuineness of your own independence and become the fit subject of the first cunning tyrant who arises among you.

Gentlemen, I am not an attorney, but that was a very good one, and I let him close for me.

Mr. HOBBS. You do not suppose, for a moment, any member of this committee would dissent from that?

Mr. ALLEN. No; I do not. I said I was an amicus curiae, or a friend of the Court.

Mr. HOBBS. I understand your position and appreciate it. What I want to know is, What solution to this problem would you suggest.

Mr. ALLEN. You mean the problem of what to do with aliens who are deportable and cannot be deported? You mean specifically or generally?

Mr. HOBBS. I challenge that shorthand rendition of facts, when you say "cannot." I think that all of them are all alike. Princess Stephanie, who made a desperate struggle to gain a passport tried 50 countries furiously and desperately, and could not gain asylum anywhere; and yet, within 2 days after she was taken into custody, she found welcome asylum in France. In other words, I think that is the "bunk."

Mr. ALLEN. There are some cases you have been considering where men should be deported and could not be, because of actual war conditions where our ships do not go.

Mr. HOBBS. I do not believe that for a moment. I believe any of them can go who want to go, and the whole purpose of this bill is simply to give them a cordial invitation to find a place somewhere else. But, be that as it may, that is the problem I have reference to. Mr. ALLEN. I see no reason for not allowing them to stay here in the same way that any citizen would; and if they are guilty of any actual espionage or sabotage, to let them have full benefit of the law, just as a citizen would if he were guilty of espionage. And I think that probably plenty of our German cititzens are spies for Germany, and Germany has plenty of Americans who are spies. The real test of the law should be on what these people are doing, not the fact they are citizens or noncitizens. There are 5,000,000 today in this country. Mr. HOBBS. This is not a national-defense measure. It has nothing to do with espionage, sabotage, kidnaping, or any other crime. What we are talking about is the policy of our immigration and deportation service.

Now, what I want to know is when the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly held that these people are guests on sufferance and when the mills of justice have ground, and after indulging every presumption of innocence in their behalf, they have been convicted of a deportable offense, and then the Immigration Service has sworn out a warrant, and they have been arrested and given, as Joe Strecker was, four separate hearings, and finally an appeal to the Supreme Court, after they have had the same rights as Joe Strecker exercised successfully, these who were not successful and a warrant of deportation was finally issued against them, what I want to know is what to do with them. Do you leave them here?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes; they are no more dangerous than ordinary citizens. Mr. HOBBS. They are not ordinary citizens. They have no right to stay here, and under our quota system, every one you allow to remain here crowds out a decent citizen, or at least takes a chance away from one who is thought to be decent.

Mr. ALLEN. I would suggest that you change the quota system. I would suggest that you change the theory of treating aliens. As I say, this is the logical and outrageous outcome of all that has gone before. If we are to have the shining democracy in this country; if we are to convince the people of the world that this is a government and a land unlike any other, I think that would be the best way to do it, to open our doors to everyone that wants to come in and let them help build, whoever does come in.

Mr. HOBBS. Everyone who does come in helps to build?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes; and those few, by and large, those few who do not, let them take their chances as any citizen does. Remember, now, that they have been looking into the Alien Registration Act statistics. They found the criminal records of those aliens is not abnormally high, not as high as we had been given reason to think it would be. It is not exactly just your bill, Mr. Hobbs; it is the theory behind it. Mr. HOBBS. It is the theory behind it?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes; the theory of treating, setting up two races of men and regarding the aliens as the people who must suffer repression which you cannot inflict on ordinary citizens.

Mr. HOBBS. Now, I am so happy that you have brought that up, because nothing could be further from the truth. I suppose you are. All of us are. We stole this country from the Indians.

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOBBS. We do not belong here. We are all aliens. This country has been built up by aliens but that is not the point. We have laid down the law as to who shall be admitted. It is a sovereign power of the United States to separate from its free life those who do not live up to the rules in their sojourn here.

The Supreme Court has held, as you know, that they have no right to remain here; they have no vested claim to breathe this air; that is, the air that happens to be temporarily over this hemisphere. What we are trying to do is to build that democracy that will be a good place in which to live and assure the world that it is a better place than the asylum of the oppressed people under dictators and other systems.

Now, you cannot do that if you allow the blood stream of our body politic to be poisoned with these rotten, poisonous elements, and that is all this is. It is trying to restore the lost sovereignty of the United States in respect of deportation.

Take the Esposito brothers, take Cesar Euilano, take the gang of thugs and racketeers in Detroit, take the ones in Chicago and elsewhere who are a stench in the nostrils of any decent person, and they are the ones who have been here and ordered deported, and who thumb their noses at Uncle Sam and spurn his sovereign power to purify this land. We are not after the alien because he is an alien, but we are after this element.

Mr. ALLEN. I would say that my definition is wider than that. It is "We, the people," and I am willing to take a chance.

Mr. HOBBS. "We, the people"?

Mr. ALLEN. "We, the people."

Mr. HOBBS. Are willing to take a chance?

Mr. ALLEN. That these people, as you say, will poison the blood stream of this country.

Mr. HOBBS. You are willing to take that chance?

Mr. ALLEN. The Esposito boys are getting the same benefit of the law as a citizen would get. You cannot save the blood stream of the body politic of the country that way. I think it was Colonel Trevor who entered into the record the Callicots and the Jukes.

Mr. HOBBS. I do not know.

Mr. ALLEN. One of those boys was the result of a drummer boy in the American Revolution and a barmaid; and I hate to speak against the descendants of the American Revolution, but that sort of thing is universal. Vice and crime is as much a part of American citizens as it is the Union.

Mr. HOBBS. Of course, we have to put up with our own trash, but we do not have to put up with alien trash. You take Cesar Euilano; he committed four crimes and was convicted four times in Italy before he lied and came over here under a false passport, which he obtained What are you going to do with him?

Mr. ALLEN. What would you do with the ordinary American citizen?

Mr. HOBBS. As I say, we have to put up with him, but we do not have to allow a man like Cesar Euilano to plead guilty and organize his Philadelphia poison ring while he is serving a 15-year term for murder. We do not have to let him remain here and displace a perfectly good alien like Edouard Benes, or Albert Einstein, who will help us build. Mr. ALLEN. Are you sure you are not arguing from the particular to the general? It looks far more dangerous than that to me.

Mr. HOBBS. That is the whole purpose of the bill. It is to strain out the poisonous dregs that are ruining our civilization and causing a great deal of the trouble. Now, I grant you that citizens do the same thing, but we cannot help that, but we can help this.

Mr. ALLEN. The laws that we have governing citizens, that is, an old offender, putting them in jail for successively longer terms, putting them on parole, would that work with these people?

Mr. HOBBS. It might; but the point I am making is that we would rather swap a radical for a good man. We would rather take a chance on a new man than one who had proven himself utterly unworthy; who had abused our hospitality; who had made a living out of white slavery and narcotics; that is the whole thing. That is what I am proposing.

You are smiling.

Mr. ALLEN. I was smiling because that goes for the American, too. I am worried about this part. We have to do with freedom of opinion and expression.

Mr. HOBBS. You are talking about Communists.

Mr. ALLEN. I am talking about anyone who might be called a Communist. I do not know what a Communist is, and I do not think anybody can put in a law anything so general as that and have a court decide what is a Communist.

Mr. HOBBS. Of course, that statement of yours presupposes your lack of faith in the courts.

Mr. ALLEN. I cannot see, since the Communist Party and these other parties are legal, that there should be any difference made there.

Mr. HOBBS. They are legal only for citizens. In other words, a citizen-we cannot deport a man because he is a Communist if he is a citizen; but we can, and I think we should, if he is an alien. The Communist Party, as defined in the act, as you know, in 1917 or 1918, is one who advocated the overthrow of this Government by force or violence, and that has been the traditional definition from the beginning. And when the law says that that degree of proof which is required by the law has been met, and that fact established, then they go whether or not they should go being a matter for wise legislative policy.

Now, then, I think if there is a mistake made on the border-line cases, which I grant, in human wisdom, will follow at times, if there is a mistake made, what harm have you done? You have opened the way

for a good man to come here who is not even suspicioned of communism.

Mr. ALLEN. I agree with you that you can. I do not agree_you should. I am not afraid of Communists. I do not thing the Communist Party can do anything with a government that belongs to the people of the United States. I am not afraid of their overthrowing the Government. I do not think any government is overthrown by a handful of people. I am familiar with the fact that the people of this country are not going to be led astray to overthrow the Government. I know with the Declaration of Independence, my ancestor, Jorn Krewson, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, went out and fought for it. That is what the American people fight for. We are not afraid.

Mr. HOBBS. You may not be of that opinion, but Joe Stalin is, and so are the members of the Third International, and so are all the foreign Communists who have to pay money to propagandize this country and they have succeeded in convincing you in that there is no danger. I think that is a very deleterious result of their propagranda.

Mr. ALLEN. I learned that at the University of Virginia from Thomas Jefferson. I think that if Joe Stalin thinks he can overthrow this Government, it would be a very different thing.

Mr. HOBBS. That is a matter of a difference of opinion, between you and Mr. Stalin.

Mr. ALLEN. Yes; and I have a lot of differences of opinion with Mr. Stalin.

Mr. HOBBS. That is all.

Mr. WEAVER. Mr. Allen, I gather from what you say you are opposed to our restricted immigration laws.

Mr. ALLEN. I think they are very, very unwise. I think if the Congress threw open the doors of this country to allow the people who came in who have always looked at this country as a haven of democracy, that it would be the best way of showing the people of the world that we did stand for more than the four freedoms; that the best way of establishing that is to go so far as to have it absolutely and completely here.

Democracy is for export, but you have to have it very intensively at home before you export it.

Mr. WEAVER. Mr. Guyer, do you have any questions?

Mr. GUYER. Your solution would be to completely turn them loose? Mr. ALLEN. You mean these deportable aliens?

Mr. GUYER. Yes.

Mr. ALLEN. Under the same rules and regulations which apply to citizens; yes. I think we are amply protected in this country from any harm which criminal citizens can inflict upon us.

Mr. GUYER. In very many cases, we would be. That is assured by law. A man who drops into this country, he still is here in a good way or a bad way. He would certainly do no harm. Yet there is no crime except he came in illegally, but our experience has been there are a good many of them that are not so innocent.

Mr. ALLEN. I fell that you are setting up two race of men, that there are some people who are noncitizens who are not getting the same freedom which I have because my forefathers happened to be here, and that is extremely dangerous. It is extremely dangerous to the fabric of democracy and it is very bad policy to throw them out with this bill. There are less than 5,000,000 aliens here and the num