Restrictionists Present Arguments Against Repealing National Origins Clause (By our Washington Correspondent)
The biggest gun of the immigration restrictionists was fired at the special conference for restriction of immigration, called under the auspices of the “Key Men of America” with headquarters in New York and participated in, as claimed, by thirty patriotic societies.
No action was taken other than to voice opposition against the repeal of the National Origins clause in the Immigration Act of 1924, which bases immigration quotas on the “nordic theory”. The law is scheduled to go into effect July 1 of this year unless action is taken to repeal it.
To heighten the patriotic effect, the conference was held at Memorial Continental Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. At the two sessions of the conference, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening, Congressman Albert Johnson, Chairman of the House Immigration Committee, Senators David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, Pat Harrison of Mississippi and Congressman Box of Texas were among the speakers.
The National Origins system, they asserted, permits of orderly and selective admission of immigrants and consequently makes possible automatic and nominal assimilation by the social and patriotic forces of the United States. If return to wholesale and unrestricted adm sion is allowed, American ideals, habits and health will suffer, the speakers declared, and the biological effect will be damaging, as will the interests of skilled labor suffer.
Senator Harrison discussed immigration from the literacy standpoint. After quoting from predictions made by Presidents Jefferson and Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, he observed that “when the American people are expending more than a billion dollars a year in the education of our youth, it is preposterous to say the gates should be opened and the illiterate of other countries be allowed to infest our land. I favor the national origin theory because I believe it would permit more of a desirable class coming from Western Europe and fewer from other sections.”
Senator Reed told of observations on immigration which he made during his last three summer tours of Europe. On the first of this year, he told the audience, there were one million, five hundred thousand applicants for admission to the United States registered with our European consulates. “Imagine the effect upon American life,” Senator Reed said, “if we were suddenly to permit this tremendous migration from Jugo-Slavia, Greece and the other countries on the Mediterranean, from Russia, Hungary, and all the countries in which this throng of applicants reside. That number, remember, would inevitably be followed by other millions at a rate so rapid that the United States would soon lose its American identity and become a polyglot of transported European cultures and institutions.
“We have no need for any such immigration. America is doing its own work well today. Can you inflict any greater injury upon an American who works with his hands than to introduce a competition of a million and a half new workers, who come to look for jobs and come inevitably to take jobs from American citizens?”
Senator Reed declared that he intends to propose legislation to reunite separated families at this session. Referring to the general policy of restriction he declared, “We can still have that policy intact, while giving preference, within the quotas, the relatives of persons already in this country. Much cruelty has been ended by our present system of examining immigrants before they leave their native lands. We ought now, in all justice, try to end this other type of suffering and to permit the reunion of families wherever possible. I intend to take steps in the Senate at the present session to accomplish this.”
Mrs. William Sherman Walker, chairman of the defense committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution, described the methods employed by the Daughters in assisting the immigrant toward acclimation. “We have not assimilated all of the thousands who have come to this country to take up their abode,” Mrs. Walker said. “Proof of this statement.” she declared, “can be found in the fact that there are in many of our cities foreign sections which live a life apart from American customs and ideals.” All of these residents, Mrs. Walker believes, are “Potential obstacles to universal Americanism and wholehearted fidelity to the United States.”
Professor H. H. Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institute of Washington, said in unlimited immigration lies a constant depressing of the American native stock. “The effects of differential fecundity on racial turnover are powerful and clean cut,” he observed. “Foreign-born population is reproducing itself at the present time approximately one and two-thirds times as rapidly as native born white. The outcome of the present differential fecundity, if continued for four generations, would mean that the descendants of the present native-born white population, which now constitutes 76.3 percent of the whole population, would be reduced to 39.37 percent, whereas, the present foreign-born population, which now constitutes 12.97 of the whole, would, at the end of four generations, constitute in their descendants 51.76 percent,” he stated.
That there will be no successful attack upon the existing immigration legislation was prophesied by Representation was prophesied by Representative Box. “The people of the United States are so definitely determined that immigration shall be rigidly held in check,” he said, “that many who would oppose this settled policy dare not openly attack it.
“Why have a tariff law to keep out products of pauper labor abroad?” Mr. Box inquired, “and at the same time be bringing in armies of peons to create an over-supply inside the tariff wall?”
Congressman Johnson told the afternoon gathering that even with restricted immigration the population of the United States is steadily increasing, as an argument against the opponents of limited immigration who have contended that if restriction is rigidly enforced, the population will show a marked decrease. “South America would like to stem the tide of European immigration,” Representative Johnson said, “but no South American country has thus far dared to grapple with the problem as the United States has done.”
Strong alien influences are at work to influence Congress not merely to postpone but to repeal the national origins provision, and this would pave the way to the ultimate repeal of the Immigration Act of 1924, according to Hugh White Adams, New York lawyer, and lecturer of the Immigration Restriction League, who was the last speaker at the afternoon session.
Elon Huntington Hooker, chairman of the American Defense Society, who actively participated in the passage of the present immigration laws, addressed the meeting as the representative of the Chamber of Commerce of New York State.
“The greatest contribution America can make to internationalism,” Mr. Hooker asserted, “is to maintain a strong nationalism.” In order to accomplish this purpose he is willing, if necessary, to advocate a complete cessation of immigration. Mr. Hooker declared.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
