New Drastic Immigration Bill Introduced in House by Congressman Blanton

Asks Suspension of All Immigration for Eight Years and Registration of Aliens (Jewish Daily Bulletin)

A bill providing for the complete suspension of immigration for a period of eight years, until January 1, 1935, has been introduced in the House by Congressman Tom Blanton of Texas. This bill would admit during this period only diplomats, ministers of religion, and temporary visitors and their wives, parents, and unmarried children over eighteen, as well as emergency farm and ranch labor for temporary periods.

The bill also provides for the registration of all aliens within sixty days after passage. Registration is to be in the Federal or in the State Courts. The bill gives authority to the Secretary of Labor to issue regulations covering information to be given and other details in connection with registration and further requiring that upon removal from a county aliens so leaving shall, within thirty days, procure from the clerk of the court a certificate of removal and file the certificate with the clerk of the naturalization court in the county of new residence. A fine of $1,000 and imprisonment for not more than one year is provided for those failing to register.

The Commissioner General of Immigration, the Commissioner of Naturalization and the Commissioner of Labor Statistics would constitute an Americanization Board with the function of inquiring into conditions of life among aliens, promoting Americanization among them, and regularly reporting to the President and Congress measures on Americanization. The bill also requires furnishing of a bond by alien seamen guaranteeing to return to their ships, in view of the alleged surreptitious entries by alien seamen.

The bill contains a long preamble giving reasons for this drastic bill among which are the folowing allegations:

The 1920 census showed 5,398,605 aliens in America making no attempt to become citizens and 5,000 additional aliens have entered lawfully and unlawfully each year since that census.

Since the United States entered the World War, the courts have denied citizenship to 26,586 aliens who during the war claimed exemption from military service. “Bands of rich and influential conspirators of national and international prominence are engaged in the Delirious business of unlawfully smuggling aliens into the United States” and it is extremely difficult with the present limited board of patrol to stop the board of aliens from annually entering the United States unlawfully. Thousands of American laborers are now unable to obtain employment and are without means and opportunity of earning a livelihod for their families, smuggled aliens are constantly robbing the American laborers of jobs, thus taking from the mouths of American wives and little children the necessities of life. Many of such smuggled aliens are lawless thugs and anarchists who hate all forms of civilized government and whose policy is to tear down and destroy rather than to build up.

Several million aliens who have been naturalized do no speak our language, do not understand our institutions, do not adopt American manners and ideals. With all immigration suspended, it will take ten years to assimilate them. Unless these conditions are remedied, our Americas standard of living will be materially lowered to the detriment of our people and our government the preamble asserts.