Johnson Announces New Restriction Plan for Next Congress Session

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Making sensational charges against the immigrant population, Chairman Johnson of the House Immigration Committee revealed another change of heart toward the immigration problem by announcing that he will ask the next session of Congress, convening in December, to reduce immigration from the present approximate total of 160,000 to 75,000 or about one-half. The bill he will propose will limit the maximum quota for any country after July 1, 1928 to 25,000. This reduction to one-half will be effected by a plan whereby the quotas shall be reduced ten per cent per year from July 1, 1928, until July 1, 1933, when the basis of computation would be changed to one per cent of the 1890 census. He will provide for the admitting of a liimted number of relatives, however, by giving the benefit of the ten per cent annual reduction to certain relatives for the first two years after the bill goes into effect.

Chairman Johnson also declared he will support voluntary registration of aliens and the revival at the next Congress of the Holaday Deportation Bill.

Chairman Johnson disclosed these intentions in a statement printed in the Congressional Record of March 14.

“We shall revive the deportation bill in the next Congress. I believe the gentleman from Illinois, (Representative Holaday (Rep.,) of Danville, III.) is right in his belief that a national form of voluntary alien registration can be effected. Such a form of registration is necessary as the first step toward giving some recognition of legal domicile to the large number of well-meaning aliens who are unable to prove legal entry into the United States and who are not subject to deportation because of the time limitations of the law,” Johnson stated.

“We could not deport these people if we would; and I have heard of nobody who wants to deport them; but as we deal with those who have entered surreptitiously since the restrictive immigration act of 1924, it will become more necessary to give some form of card to those others in the great alien mass here whom we hope to take into citizenship some day; but when we go into that process of giving citizenship to these I think we should extend the time which now exists between the holding of first papers and the right to final citizenship,” he said.

Explaining the reason for his present drastic attitude, Johnson expressed great indignation with respect to “certain churches of various denominations working through an organization which professes its interest in the immigrant for relief of relatives.” Johnson does not indicate to what organization he has reference but states that questionnaires have been sent out by this organization with instructions to get details of distressing cases and when completed these will be sent to various members of Congress. Already six hundred have been prepared in Pittsburgh, he said. Congressman Johnson does not explain the reason for his indignation, particularly since he professed to support partial relief of relatives at the last session of Congress. Charging that aliens cause American life to deteriorate, Johnson stated:

“They came faster and faster, more than amillion a year, for a long stretch of time, conditions in the United States began to change. Our traditions began to change; our customs began to change, hardly noticeable at first, until suddenly we awakened to find about everything changed. Our literature is changing. Who would have though twenty-five years ago that in this year 1927 book publishers with strange sounding names would turn out books too filthy for even the most decadent European country?

“The drama in the United States has changed until a great part of it is nude, cheap, and vulgar. Methods in our public schools have changed. The grade schools and even the high schools have had to slow down so as not to get too far ahead of the children who have come out of the melting-pot mixture-not to say that there are not many bright and intelligent children among these, even geniuses-but the average is down. Even the stature of our people is changing in larger cities.

“The character of our newspapers is changed. Too few newspapers now attempt to lead when 25 years ago they did lead an intelligent, constructive public. The tabloid newspaper, with its trash, its vulgarity, and its obscenity, is making it harder and harder for the substantial, clean newspaper to reach the everyday mass of our population. I refer to the newspapers printed in English. In several of the large cities the circulation of the foreign-language newspapers exceed that of the English newspapers. Cleveland, Ohio, finds itself with but one morning English daily. I have forgotten just how many foreign language morning dailies there are in that city, but there are several.

“I attribute nearly all of these changes to the forces of the newly arrived people of the last quarter of a century, not charging it against any one kind of foreign people, mind you.

“I am sure the thinking public senses all of this, and I am satisfied that the feeling in the House of Representatives today is for more and more restriction of immigration. I do not believe it is possible to stop or check the movement for greater restriction than we now have. Interested organizations may cry out for more and cheaper labor; farmers may cry for imported serflike farm hands; women may think that they need servants from abroad; but all intelligent citizens, when they analyze the situation, will see that so many such arrivals must bring down the standards.

“I have been able to observe that a very large proportion of our people, perhaps not more than two generations away from the old countries, want restriction. They know why. They do not want this country to go the way the older countries have gone. They do not want us to break up and divide into peoples speaking varying languages and hating each other-a veritable Babel.

“Nobody expects much heavy, constructive legislation in a short session of Congress, but I think I can see that the complexion of the next House as well as the next Senate will be highly restrictionist; and I am safe in laying out a program that will likely include, among other things, quotas or restriction of the countries of this hemisphere; less immigration; more examinations overseas; less need for Ellis Island; more selection; and, above all, more care in the making of citizens, and a form of registration by which every citizen and every alien and every alien seaman may have something to show his right to be in the United States of America.”

It was disclosed today that Johnson introduced his new bill during the last day of the Congress session just closed in order that members may have an opportunity of studying it during the recess.