Alien Question is Again Brought Up

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Congressman Hoch of Kansas, author of the proposed amendment to the Constitution to change the method of congressional representation eliminating aliens from being computed in the basis of representation, again started a discussion of the issue on the floor of the House by commenting on the action of Congressman Schafer of Wisconsin in reading a letter from W. H. Anderson, former Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of New York, regarding the proposed amendment. Congressman Hoch charged that Schafer was trying to inject “The wet and dry issue and the religious question.”

“I do not think that the apportionment question has anything to do with the wet and dry question or with the question of religion. Here we have in the State of New York, by way of illustration, four electoral votes, and in Massachusetts two votes cast upon the election of the President of the United States solely because there are several million aliens in those States. And so with the other States where the seven or eight million aliens in America principally reside,” Mr. Hoch stated.

Hch declared that upon the basis of the 1920 census the reapportioonment. excluding aliens from the count, would mean a shifting of nine electoral votes from five states and that if aliens had beel excluded from the basis of representation in any of these given states it would have changed the result of the last Presidential election.

“Is it reasonable, is it right, that the electorial vote of any State in this Union in the election of the President of the United States should be increased solely by the fact that there are within that State a great body of aliens that is, unnaturalized foreign born?” Congressman Hoch asked.