Governor Smith and Oscar S. Straus Oppose Registration and Deportation Bills

The opposition of Governor Alfred E. Smith to the alien registration and deportation bills was voiced in a message addressed to Max J. Kohler and read by Mr. Kohler at the luncheon meeting held Saturday at the Hotel Astor to protest against these bills. The message of the Governor declared:

“I am opposed to the registration of aliens because under our American conception of government, the state exists for the welfare and protection of the individual when the enjoyment of that freedom does not conflict with the rights and freedom of others. This proposed law would give the kind of power to an administrative body that would inevitably lead to tyranhy and abuse. It would result in the practice of espionage characteristic of too much government by administrative processes. I need only refer to the tyranny of czaristic Russia where this kind of control was vested in such agencies, and the attendant corruption and injustice which characterized this system in Russia is only one historical reason for not introducing it in America.

“I deplore the tendency manifested in recent years to give to administrative bodies control over the movements and liberty of persons which are more satisfactorily sateguarded and protected by Courts of Justice. As Governor of the State of New York, I opposed this tendency to limit the freedom of individuals in connection with my veto of the notorious Lusk Bills. While the problem was different, the methods proposed to solve it contained the same seeds of un-American abuse of power. Moreover, the administrative organs proposed for the registration of aliens would breed methods of identification and of detection such as finger-printing and measurentents associated with police methods for the detection of crime.

“To subject the alien to a sample of the kind of government which drove him here is a poor way of making him appreciate American institutions.

“This proposal, in its attempt to regulate immigration, would create abuses and problems more fundamental and more destructive of American freedom than any evil it might aim to cure.”

The statement of Hon. Oscar S. Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Roosevelt and member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, was:

“The proposed legislation for the registration of aliens would have the effect of applying the Czaristic, autocratic, Russian system to American institutions. I am radically opposed to it, because it is un-American and in conflict with the basic principles of American liberty. It is a reflection upon our judicial system, and places power with administrative bureaucrats, which the courts are perfectly qualified to deal with, in the case of unnaturalized aliens, in the same way as they deal with all other infringers of our laws. It creates a large number of irresponsible officials, who can use that power for oppression, bribery and corruption. I very much fear that some of our citizens who favor registration-of-alien laws, have lost sight of the grave evils that would be embraced in such a system. The fathers of the republic, notably Jefferson and Madison–and even their strongest opponents, Hamilton and John Marshall. agreed on that issue with those Democratic leaders–opposed the Alien and Sedition Laws, which embodied the system of registration of aliens, as in conflict with the spirit and ideals of American liberty. Such a system of registration contravenes the charter of our liberty, the Declaration of Independence, and the orderly development of our institution.”