A Square DealandImmigration
The question of immigration is of vital interest to this country. In the year ending June 30, 1905, there came to the United States 1,026,000 alien immigrants. In other words, in the single year that has just elapsed there came to this country a greater number of people than came here during the one hundred and sixty-nine years of our Colonial life which intervened between the first landing at Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence. It is clearly shown in the report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration that while much of this enormous immigration is undoubtedly healthy and natural, a considerable proportion is undesirable for one reason or another; moreover, a considerable proportion of it, probably a very large proportion, including most of the undesirable class, does not come here of its own initiative but because of the activity of the agents of the great transportation companies. These agents are distributed throughout Europe, and by the offer of all kinds of inducements they wheedle and cajole many immigrants, often against their best interest, to come here. The most serious obstacle we have to encounter in the effort to secure a proper regulation of the immigrationto these shores arises from the determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines who have no interest whatever in the matter save to increase the returns on their capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage quarters of their ships.
¶We can not have too much immigration of the right sort, and we should have none whatever of the wrong sort. Of course it is desirable that even the right kind of immigration should be properly distributed in this country. We need more of such immigration for the South; and special effort should be made to secure it. Perhaps it would be possible to limit the number of immigrants allowed to come in any one year to New York and other northern cities, while leaving unlimited the number allowed to come to the South; always provided, however, that a stricter effort is made to see that only immigrants of the right kind come to our country anywhere.
¶In actual practice it has proved so difficult to enforce the immigration laws where long stretches of frontier marked by an imaginary line alone intervene between us and our neighbors that I recommend that no immigrants be allowed to come in from Canada and Mexico, save natives of the two countries themselves. As much as possible should be done to distribute the immigrants upon the land and keepthem away from the congested tenement-house districts of the great cities. But the distribution is a palliative, not a cure. The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens. The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened.
¶Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States. Moreover, there should be a sharp limitation imposed upon vessels coming to our ports as to the number of immigrants in ratio to the tonnage which each vessel can carry. This ratio should be high enough to insure the coming hither of as good a class of aliens as possible. Provision should be made for the surer punishment of those who induce aliens to come to this country under promise or assurance of employment. It should be made possible to inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law to deter him from taking the risk. It seems to me wise that there should be an international conference held to deal with this question of immigration, which has more than a merely national significance; such a conference could among other things enter at length into the methods for securing a thorough inspection ofwould-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark before permitting them to embark.
¶In dealing with this question it is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man’s fitness for citizenship. It is our right and duty to consider his moral and social quality. His standard of living should be such that he will not, by pressure of competition, lower the standard of living of our own wage-workers; for it must ever be a prime object of our legislation to keep high their standard of living. If the man who seeks to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily welcomed. We can not afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or another, of one nation or another. We cannot afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav, or Magyar. What we should endeavor to find out is the individual quality of the individual man. In my judgment, with this end in view, we shall have to prepare through our own agents a far more rigid inspection in the countries from which the immigrants come.
¶It will be a great deal better to have fewer immigrants, but all of the right kind, than a great number of immigrants, many of whom are necessarily of the wrong kind. As far as possible we wish to limit the immigration to this country to persons who propose to become citizens of this country, and we can well afford to insist upon adequate scrutiny of the character of those who are thus proposed for future citizenship. There should be an increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out the insane, the idiotic, the epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the anarchist, but every man of anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically unfit, defective, or degenerate should be kept out. The stocks out of which American citizenship is to be built should be strong and healthy, sound in body, mind and character. If it be objected that the Government agents would not always select well, the answer is that they would certainly select better than do the agents and brokers of foreign steamship companies, the people who now do what ever selection is done.[14]
¶Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen,every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members of the community. But there should be a comprehensive law enacted with the object of working a threefold improvement over our present system. First, we should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic societies, but also all persons who are of a low moral tendency or of unsavory reputation. This means that we should require a more thorough system of inspection abroad and a more rigid system of examination at our immigration ports, the former being especially necessary.
¶The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order, out ofwhich anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an American living and enough money to ensure a decent start under American conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting competition which givesrise to so much of bitterness in American industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations have their greatest possibility of growth.
¶Both educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and social. A very close supervision should be exercised over the steamship companies which mainly bring over the immigrants, and they should be held to a strict accountability for any infraction of the law.[7]
¶The United States Government endeavors to do its duty by the immigrants who come to these shores, but unless people have had some experience with the dangers and difficulties surrounding the newly arrived immigrant they can hardly realize how great they are.
¶The immigrant comes here almost unprotected; he does not as a rule know our language, he is wholly unfamiliar with our institutions, our customs, our habits of life and ways of thought, and there are, I am sorry to say, great numbers of evil and wicked people who hope to make their livelihood by preying on him. He is exposed to innumerable temptations, innumerable petty oppressions, on almost every hand, and unless some one is there to help him he literally has no idea where to turn.
¶No greater work can be done by a philanthropic or religious society than to stretch out the helping hand to the man and the woman who come here to this country to become citizens, and the parent of citizens, and therefore, to do their part in making up for weal or woe the future of our land. If we do not take care of them, if we do not try to uplift them, then as sure as fate our own children will pay the penalty. If we do not see that the immigrant and the children of the immigrant are raised up most assuredly the result will be that our own children and children’s children are pulled down. Either they will rise or we shall sink.
¶The level of well-being in this country will be a level for all of us. We cannot keep that level down for a part and not have it sink moreor less for the whole. Therefore it means much, not merely to the immigrants but to every good American that there should be at Ellis Island, the colporteurs and the representatives of religious and philanthropic societies to try to care for the immigrant’s body, and above all to try to care for the immigrant’s soul.
¶It is of course unnecessary to say that the things of the body must be cared for; that the first duty of any man, especially of the man who has others dependent upon him, is to take care of them and to take care of himself. Nobody can help others if he begins by being a burden upon others. Each man must be able to pull his own weight; and therefore each man must show his capacity to earn for himself and his family enough to secure a certain amount of material well-being. That must be the foundation. But on that foundation he must build as a superstructure the spiritual life.[17]
¶This government is based upon the fundamental idea that each man, no matter what his occupation, his race, or his religious belief, is entitled to be treated on his worth as a man, and neither favored nor discriminated against because of any accident in his position. Even here at home there is painful difficulty in the effort to realize this ideal; and the attempt tosecure from other nations acknowledgment of it sometimes encounters obstacles that are well-nigh insuperable; for there are many nations which in the slow procession of the ages have not yet reached that point where the principles which Americans regard as axiomatic obtain any recognition whatever. One of the chief difficulties arises in connection with certain American citizens of foreign birth or of particular creed, who desire to travel abroad. Russia for instance, refuses to admit and protect Jews. Turkey refuses to admit and protect certain sects of Christians.
¶This Government has consistently demanded equal protection abroad for all American citizens, whether native or naturalized. On March 27, 1899, Secretary Hay sent a letter of instructions to all the diplomatic and consular officers of the United States in which he said: “This Department does not discriminate between native-born and naturalized citizens in according them protection while they are abroad, equality of treatment being required by the laws of the United States.”
¶These orders to our agents abroad have been repeated again and again, and are treated as the fundamental rule of conduct laid down for them, proceeding upon the theory “that all naturalized citizens of the United States whilein foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from this Government the same protection of persons and property which is accorded to native-born citizens.”
¶In issuing passports the State Department never discriminates, or alludes to any man’s religion; and in granting to every American citizen, native or naturalized, Christian or Jew, the same passport, so far as it has power it insists that all foreign governments shall accept the passport as prima facie proof that the person therein described is a citizen of the United States and entitled to protection as such. It is a standing order to every American diplomatic and consular officer to protect every American citizen of whatever faith, from unjust molestation, and officers abroad have been stringently required to comply with this order.... The steady pressure which the Department has been keeping up in the past will be continued in the future. This Administration has on all proper occasions given clear expression to the belief of the American people that discrimination and oppression because of religion, wherever practiced, are acts of injustice before God and man, and in making evident to the world the depth of American conviction in this regard we have gone to the very limit of diplomatic usage.[18]