A new proposal to solve the national origins clause question and for the working out of a new immigration restriction plan based on the idea of selective immigration, was introduced into the Senate by Senator Allen of Kansas.
The bill provides for the establishment of a joint Congressional committee which is to be instructed to make a scientific survey upon which would be based a selective immigration policy. Certain select classes of immigrants are to be admitted to the United States in accordance with the needs of the country. Under this plan priority would be given to immigrants on the basis of their individual qualities and occupations. Under the present law the immigration cannot be adapted to the needs of the country, Sena- (Continued on Page 4)
The effort to exclude aliens from the Congressional count, frustrated on Thursday in the House of Representatives, refuses to die. The supporters of this proposal have now decided to attempt to accomplish the same purpose by introducing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Representative Hoch, Republican, of Kansas, introduced an amendment which would strike from the Constitution, the word “persons” and substitute the word “citizens,” thereby leaving aliens out of the population count as it applies to apportionment of the House of Representatives. If it should be passed by Congress, it would still have to be ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the forty-eight states.
Similar Constitutional amendments have been presented before, in both House and Senate, but none has reached a vote. It appears improbable that efforts to bring about a vote will succeed at this time, although unquestionably a strong support for alien exclusion has developed at both ends of the Capitol in connection with consideration of the reapportionment and census legislation passed by the House.
The two main questions before the conference will be whether November, 1929, or May, 1930, will be the date for taking the census and whether the 100,000 or more enumerators shall be under civil service. Other differences between the two branches are of a technical character and will require little discussion.
Representative Hoch said that many members of Congress who had voted against alien exclusion as a part of the reapportionment census bill, have told him they will support it as a separate proposition.
“The fight on alien representation is not over.” he declared. “And let me say again that I have not made this fight as an opponent of reapportionment. On every vote for ten years. I have voted for reapportionment even though my own State would lose one member, and I have opposed increasing the size of the House. But I shall continue to insist that it is grossly unfair to count 7,000,000 aliens-foreign-born and un-naturalized-congregated largely in a few States, to increase the Congressional representation and the electoral votes of those States, at the expense of the States where representation would be based upon citizenship.”
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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.
