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Mr. WEAVER. The committee wants to assure you it has been very happy to hear your views.

This closes the hearings on this bill.

(Whereupon, at 12.45, p. m., the subcommittee adjourned.)

Mr. FRANK CONNELL,

NATIONAL NEGRO CONGRESS, Washington, D. C., May 12, 1941.

Clerk, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. CONNELL: Because the hearings on H. R. 3, a bill to do with the "supervision and detention of certain aliens," were closed before representatives of the National Negro Congress were able to testify, we wish to submit the following statement on our position on the bill, and ask that this statement be included in the record:

The National Negro Congress, representing 3,000 affiliated organizations, herewith registers vigorous protests against the passage of the Hobbs bill (H. R. 3), which has to do with the "supervision and detention of certain aliens."

The passage of this bill would mean not only the straitjacketing of every alien in our country but the beginning of a ruthless deprivation of inalienable rights not only of noncitizens but of every minority group in our land.

As representatives of 13,000,000 Negroes in America, many of whom would come under the vicious, un-American provisions of this bill, we make known our conviction that a denial of freedom, under our Constitution to any section of America's population, will sooner or later mean the denial of the fundamental democratic rights of all citizens in our country.

As representatives of America's largest minority, long steeled in the fight to win democracy for our people, a democracy whose fruits we have never fully enjoyed, we stand for the full preservation of democratic rights for all people in the United States.

For these reasons we strenuously oppose the passage of this bill, whose provisions are built on a war hysteria engendered by those in our country who would destroy freedom, and the rights of all, in the name of that same democracy which all of us believe in.

Sincerely yours,

GEORGE B. MURPHY, Jr.

L'UNITÁ DEL POPOLO,

Hon. ZEBULON WEAVER,

Secretary, Committee on the Judiciary,

New York, N. Y., May 10, 1941.

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

DEAR MR. WEAVER: In reply to a letter received from the clerk of the Committee on the Judiciary, dated May 5, asking me to submit a letter expressing the views of the people I represent in connection with the Hobbs bill (H. R. 3), relating to detention of certain aliens, please be advised that I express the opinion of 10,000 readers of L'Unitá del Popolo, progressive Italian American newspaper, that the bill in question should be killed in committee.

The small number of deportable aliens does not warrant such a bill, inasmuch as existing legislation already covers such people; besides, the Hobbs bill is a violation of the Bill of Rights, and, if enacted, will transplant to the free soil of America the vilest weeds of fascism.

Italian-American progressives are against the bill and ask that it be defeated. Yours truly,

GINO BARDI, Editor.

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION,
New York City, April 22, 1941.

Hon. HATTON W. SUMNERS,

Chairman, Judiciary Committee,

House Office Building, Washington D. C.

DEAR MR. SUMNERS: We desire to express to your our opposition to the passage of H. R. 3 by Mr. Hobbs concerning the detention of deportable aliens. Certain provisions of the bill extending the discretion of the Attorney General

seem to us highly desirable. But they are outweighed by what to us are exceedingly objectionable features from the standpoint of sound public policy. These features are:

1. The provision naming certain organizations, membership in which makes an alien automatically deportable. It is far sounder public policy to lay down a general principle on which deportation may be based and to permit the courts to construe it as it applies to particular persons or organizations. The doctrines and beliefs of any party or organization are subject to change; what may be true at one period of its history may not be true at another. The only fair determination of such changing factors lies in the courts.

We may observe that in practice the provisions of the deportation law affecting opinions have been futile. Compartively few aliens have been deported on such grounds; and in no case were any overt activities dangerous to American institutions involved.

2. The most serious objections to the bill, in our judgment, are the provisions in titles 1 and 2 permitting the detention of aliens who cannot be deported. No consideration of the public safety requires that they should be segregated. If they commit offenses they can be tried and imprisoned. If they are law abiding they should be free on bond, available whenever deportation is practicable. Any other treatment of aliens is repugnant to American principles. 3. The provision for psychiatric and medical examinations of deportable aliens (title 1, sec. 3, subsec. 2) seems to us wholly unnecessary, as well as dangerous. In the cases of aliens charged with holding proscribed political beliefs, the provision could easily become a means of persecution.

4. Subsection 3 of the same title provides for a veritable inquisition into the private lives of deportable aliens. All pertinent information is already available under the registration act concerning all such aliens. Such additional authority can only be a means for harassing this unfortunate section of the alien population.

These deportable aliens remain here through no act of their own. The circumstances of war alone prevent their deportation. While under the law they may be undesirable, they are no danger to the country while free under bond awaiting deportation in more normal times. Like all others, they are subject to the penalties of the law for any offenses committed, and require no separate treatment.

We trust that you may sufficiently share these views as to support the deletion from the bill of these objectionable provisions.

Sincerely yours,

JOHN HAYNES HOLMES,

Chairman of the Board. ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS,

General Counsel.

ROGER N. BALDWIN,

Director.

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