Mr. Box. Is not the department at a great deal of trouble all the time with the people who come in temporarily, and is not that one of your great worries?

Mr. SNYDER. Certainly.

Mr. Box. Have they not created thousands of such people who you have no facilities to handle?

Mr. SNYDER. Not that bad. They have accumulated many, but to say that they have accumulated thousands that we could not handle, that situation does not exist, thank God. We have tabs on practically all.

Mr. Box. When Mr. Hull and Mr. White ventured the opinion that the number illegally in the country was 1,500 or 3,000 or what not, what were they talking about? I do not want to interrupt you, of

course.

Mr. SNYDER. You can interrupt me all you want to, Mr. Box. At the border cities there are a great many of them. In the interior of the country there are comparatively few. Along the Texas border and the Canadian border there are constant crossings and recrossings. A person will say he is going to church or something of that sort, and he will be admitted, and, using that as a subterfuge he will stay. But if you could see the cases I pass on day after day, talking of that class of person, where he is ordered expelled from the country, you would wonder if there are any more left. It is hundreds of them a day.

Mr. Box. Permit me to say that if you could see the figures the State Department gives as the legal admissions and come with me over the States that are being filled with those people, you will wonder how they got in.

The CHAIRMAN. Those that are seen and that appear so different from the conception of the average American include all of those who began to be admitted in the war emergency in 1917, and they have moved a great deal. The average person thinks they are brand new in the country. In the second place, as to the number of surreptitious entries into the country, the exact number can never be verified. In the third place, we are taking care of it in the nicest way possible in the amendments to the naturalization laws last year. The blank is put out for the man who arrived here prior to June 3, 1921. It carries a statement as to his arrival, in one way and another, and it does not say in that blank that he does not come under the law unless he was here prior to June 3, 1921, and by that means we are getting some figures which will serve as an estimate. In a little while we think these things will solve themselves, and we have been able to get some estimate.

I think Mr. Snyder has cleared this up nicely. We are dealing with a class for which there is a demand. It is an effort to remove them from being admitted as temporary visitors with a waiver of the contract labor restrictions, all within the quotas. Now, those that come as visitors and still live here and want to stay-those people usually accuse themselves by writing or seeing some one in the department about their status, and there are still left those who come across borders for temporary stays, for two weeks or two months, or even longer, who put up a head tax with the right to reclaim that head tax if they go out within six months.

After you subtract the various classes I have mentioned, you reduce it to these men who are permitted in to do a certain class of work, if men to do that work are not here.

Mr. SNYDER. That is right.

Mr. CABLE. Under the present law does the United States or the other country make the selection of those coming here?

Mr. SNYDER. The United States has nothing to do with it as long as they stand in the waiting line to get the immigration visa, and we can only take those who come in order-we can only consider those, let me put it, who come in order.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us get that clear. The first step is a man starting to the United States or trying to start, gets a passport from his country. That is their business. He comes to our consular

office with that passport to get the same visaed.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. He has to get a certificate from the police.

The CHAIRMAN. He must have a certificate as to his penal record, poverty record, birth certificate, and other matters, all of which are subject to examination by the consul and by the medical officers, and so, after that, our consul abroad can weed them down.

Mr. CABLE. We have to pass on the crop the other countries give us, and in this bill we have the right of selection originally.

The CHAIRMAN. It is much better than it was. There certainly was a time, even after the passage of the 1917 act, when countries opened their penitentiaries and asylums and dumped their people this way. The new law permits the weeding out of the moron, pauper, and the sick, and they never get on Uncle Sam's doorsteps.

Mr. FREE. What is there that prevents an immigrant who comes in here as a temporary visitor say, for instance, one of these cases where the contract labor law has been waived from putting his application in for a visa which will permit him ultimately to come under the quota? As I understand it, while they are here temporarily, they can not be on this list.

Mr. SNYDER. The State Department has properly held that a visitor's status and an immigrant's status are incompatible. When a person is in this country temporarily, the consul takes him off immediately from the quota list. That is a splendid rule.

The CHAIRMAN. Up to the beginning of the temporary quota law anyone that could pass the requirements in the Burnett Act could come here without question, whether a visitor or immigrant, and after he was here he could change his status, because there was no count. When there came the count, a man had to be a visitor or an immigrant, and the State Department could not begin to proceed abroad until they made a decision as to whether a man was coming as an immigrant or coming as a visitor. Both the State Department and the Labor Department have held that when a man has come here as a visitor, he can not change his mind. A great many people came into this country between the time, or during the time, that elapsed between the passage of the two acts who thought they were entitled to change their status while on this soil. However, you can not be both.

Mr. SNYDER. Don't you see the righteousness of that policy? Don't you see the prejudice to the man waiting in line bona fidely as an immigrant? If a man comes in as a visitor and while here files an application for a quota number as an immigrant, he places

himself ahead of the man who has been honestly visaed. The man who has come here as a visitor has gotten ahead of the man who honestly waited across the water.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. It would be all right if the man under the law was entitled to remain in the country and the law gave him a right, under the quota, to remain here?

Mr. SNYDER. Yes.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. At this point, is it not a fact that consuls never have issued a visitor's visa to a person whose name appears upon the list to come into the nonquota class-who belongs to the quota? Mr. SNYDER. They have never issued?

Mr. DICKSTEIN. They do not issue visitor's visas to a man whose name appears on the list as coming within the quota class?

Mr. SNYDER. I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. They are on the list of people willing to have themselves listed as immigrants, and that being the case, the consul is not likely to issue a visa on a visitor's permit.

Mr. SNYDER. Sometime they do, but not often. They are very careful, but now and then it happens. They do not intend to. The regulations require them to scrutinize those applications very carefully.

Now, I have just one thing more

Mr. DICKSTEIN. I was very much interested in some of your prospective figures of 200 a month if this bill became a law. I also understand, and I think you will agree with me, that if those craftsmen are allowed to come in within the preference class and within the quota, they would be taken out of the first 50 per cent?

Mr. SNYDER. That is my understanding.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. In other words, if you had a quota of 600, 300 of them could be given preference as craftsmen during the year, over the mother and father of an American citizen, no matter what the age might be. I say it could be done if this bill becomes a law?

Mr. SNYDER. I do not think that would be the intent of the legislation.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. I did not ask that. I want to get the facts. Would it not be a fact if, for illustration, Rumania has got 360 numbers approximately, and during the year we need about 100 or 300 craftsmen from Rumania, the consul would have the power under this law, because there is no preference within the preference under the bill-he would have the power to use up all the visas on the craftsmen in preference to a father or mother of an American citizen or the husband of an American girl-and there are the dependents, too, because it is not only the craftsmen alone, but the children. do not want to quarrel with you, but I just want to get some light on the subject.

I

Mr. SNYDER. I suppose there is a possibility of misadministration or maladministration in any draft of a bill you could devise, but without committing myself definitely to any of Mr. Free's bill—and, by the way, I think it might be amended in the light of the suggestions Mr. Husband is going to submit

Mr. Box. That would make the preference run throughout the entire quota. Would not Mr. Husband's suggestion take out the 50 per cent limitation and make it run through the whole quota?

Mr. SNYDER. I have not studied that and I am not prepared to say it would be possible to do that, but it would be probable that such a situation as Mr. Dickstein describes is correct. Of course, it would be possible if the bill was not carefully prepared.

T

Mr. DICKSTEIN. Let me put this question to you: Suppose my father and mother appeared before the Rumanian consul, for illustration, and then comes the husband of an American girl, and then comes the farmer and his wife and their three children. Then comes a craftsman and his wife and four children. Now, could not the consul issue, in view of an emergency-which might be after the recommendation made by the Secretary of Labor and after investigation of the case-could not he turn around and if there were only four visas left, could he not give them to the craftsman, his wife and children, and repeat that each month?

Mr. SNYDER. No; the preferences are all established as of the date of the making of the preference. The consul is bound to consider each case in the chronological order of the making of the preference. If your father and your mother had their preferences established by the Secretary of Labor on the 21st of January and the craftsman had his on the 22d of January, your father and mother would come first. Mr. DICKSTEIN. Suppose there is, on the 1st of January, 10 craftsmen and 10 fathers and mothers along the line, and that the consul had before him a report from Secretary Davis that 10 craftsmen were necessary from Rumania and he has made an investigation and found them absolutely legitimate cases. Could not the consul, under those circumstances, grant the 10 visas to these craftsmen in place of the old people?

Mr. SNYDER. If the preferences were all established on the same day.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. I am taking it both ways. It could be done? Mr. SNYDER. If they were established on the same day.

Mr. CABLE. Are they not given numbers and marked in chronological order as the men go in?

Mr. SNYDER. They certainly are.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. That does not mean anything.

The CHAIRMAN. This morning I tried to suggest to Mr. Snyder that he make a little diagram showing some of the things which are hard to see. We can not be reading the law every five minutes. Isn't it possible for you to draw a line or a circle showing the order in which preferences are designated and what is left?

Mr. CABLE. I think the State Department has already such a thing. Haven't you, Mr. Simmons?

The CHAIRMAN. Have it where a drawing can be made of it in large figures so we can hang it up here and can see it at a glance, if you will. I believe that we will see this thing better. We can see what is open for preferences and what is open for the average immigrant.

Were you through with your questions?

Mr. DICKSTEIN. Suppose, then, that a country has a hundred numbers and all of them come out of fathers and mothers and those who are entitled to this preference, whose petitions were filed and approved by the State Department. They all come in January and they all get their numbers. How are you going to dispose of them? Suppose there are more fathers and mothers and technicians, and

91974-30-NO. 33

vice versa? Couldn't the consul turn around and take care of all technicians first?

The CHAIRMAN. The preference is divided in countries' quotas of less than 300.

Mr. DICKSTEIN. No; he can give the quotas at one time. They are not divided. They don't get their 10 per cent a month in countries where there is a hundred or less.

Mr. SNYDER. Don't you think it is more appropriate, Mr. Dickstein, to ask that question of the State Department? I have a general idea of it. I never knew a consul in my life and I don't know how they do it.

Mr. FREE. Mr. Husband made the remark this morning that the question of these preferences was easy enough. Do you know whether there are many mothers and fathers left on the other side that are trying to get in under this preference? He made a remark there are great a many vacancies in this 50 per cent quota. Can you give us any idea of it?

Mr. SNYDER. That is another matter of State Department testimony. We know only what they tell us, but we might find out what the number of petitions being filed amounts to. I haven't got it now. The CHAIRMAN. Now, Mr. Cable?

Mr. CABLE. I think the State Department can answer with reference to the chronological order of filing of the applications.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. We will finish with Mr. Snyder, then. Mr. SNYDER. I have just one more thing I want to tell the committee. I want the committee to understand how carefully investigation is had with respect to these cases.

A case is filed under the waiver of the contract labor provision, on application of the employer. It comes to the Secretary of Labor. It is sent to the Commissioner of Immigration at the port nearest the place of prospective employment. A contract labor investigator is assigned to survey the field and find out what the nature of the employer's business is, what his employment force amounts to, what he makes, what he sells, how he conducts his business; whether it is orderly, sanitary, and all that; whether he gets along with his laborers; there is contact established with the union labor forces that deal with him, and all of those things are entered into. If necessary he is called in and question and answer testimony is taken so as to make sure that he is establishing a bona fide need. If he does not establish a bona fide need-if any question is raised by any competitior or any union or association of employees there is grave suspicion cast upon him and his application is rejected.

I just want to assure the committee that the Labor Department has a scheme of operation for the investigation of these applications, and that the field service of the Immigration Bureau is capable of conducting these investigations and will conduct them honorably so that the finding of the Secretary of Labor, after the case comes to Washington, is thoroughly digested by the board of review and a formal memorandum is prepared; the Secretary of Labor will be in a position to determine whether it is in the interest of the United States to waive the contract labor law. The law will require, as it does now, that labor of like kind unemployed is not available. There is always some slight question about it. For instance, a man who is in business in Philadelphia or Reading might be able to get a man in