Senator Walsh Attacks Forces Aiming at Complete Cessation of Immigration

A total cessation of immigration to the United States within the next few years was predicted by Senator David I. Walsh, speaking at the twentieth annual meeting of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid and Sheltering Society, at the Hotel Astor, Sunday. He joined with Benjamin M. Day, Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island in condemning the snobbery with which America looks down upon its alien population. Senator Walsh warned that disdain toward its foreigners is a sign of decadence from which the country can be saved only by the infiltration of a simple, sturdy people, willing to begin at the lowest rung of the ladder.

That the United States is in imminent danger of becoming standardized, robotized unless it begins to conceive of the contribution the aliens make to American life instead of dwelling upon what America does for the alien, was the belief expressed by Commissioner Day.

Both speakers, who were the guests of honor at the session, lauded the work of the Hias both in the United States and abroad for information to and care of immigrants prior to and on their arrival at their destinations. Upwards of one thousand people attended the session. Abraham Herman, President of the Hias, presided at the meeting.

American public opinion, Senator Walsh declared, must realize that the American government has entered upon a policy of immigration restriction, which is going to increase along lines of further restriction and not along lines of liberality. These immigration strictures he ascribed to two groups, one sincere and well meaning which believes that the economic demands of the country require the strictures and another group, “a large group, too large I fear, who are opposed to immigration because of intolerance largely racial and in part religious. We must not be blind to that fact,” the Senator warned. “Indeed, that group is at present so strong in this country, that I would not be surprised to have enacted in the next few years an immigration law restricting all immigration to the United States.

Declaring that “our greatness, the prosperity of the United States, has been brought about by the ceaseless toil, energy, muscles, blood and life of the millions of immigrants that have come to our shores,” the Senator arraigned the ingratitude with which that toil had been repaid. “I regret keenly that now that we have become rich and prosperous; that we are the wealthiest nation in the world; that our Treasury is overflowing and we are enjoying luxuries no other people have ever before enjoyed, we are beginning to hold our noses and talk of aliens and foreigners in terms of disrespect. (Continued on Page 4)

“In other days,” he continued, “and in other histories it has been a sure mark of decadence when wealth and prosperity turned with disdain and animosity upon the stranger knocking at the gates. We in the United States, are doing just this thing we ought not to do, because in an age of prosperity the one redeeming factor against decay is the filtration into the life of our country of a sturdy simple people aspiring and climbing from the lowly places of life to the higher position, “Senator Walsh asserted.

Pledging his cooperation to the work of Hias during the remainder of his tenure of office, Commissioner Day pointed to the importance of readjustment of the American public’s conception of the alien. The custom of considering what America could give the alien, he said, should now be substituted by the inquiry into what the alien can give America. “Does not the alien bring to us something of the heritage that lies behind him, something of the environment in which he has lived and something of the training that he has had? Because of that equipment he is in a position to help us as we can help him. I don’t like to see in the United States a standardized type of humanity. I don’t like to think of Americans as a kind of robot, all people thinking and doing the same thing. I prefer to think of the diversity of talent in the United States. That is the ideal of America and until we reach that ideal, we will not be able to dissipate the great curse of America, the feeling of intolerance and racial prejudice,” Commissioner Day concluded.