¶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] A Square Deal and The Chinese Question The questions arising in connection with Chinese immigration stand by themselves. The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work and their low standard of living. Not only is it to the interest of this country to keep them out, but the Chinese authorities do not desire that they should be admitted. At present their entrance is prohibited by laws amply adequate to accomplish this purpose. These laws have been, are being, and will be, thoroughly enforced. The violations of them are so few in number as to be infinitesimal and can be entirely disregarded. There is no serious proposal to alter the immigration law as regards the Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled, and there is no excuse for any man feeling or affecting to feel the slightest alarm on the subject. ¶But in the effort to carry out the policy of excluding Chinese laborers, Chinese coolies, grave injustice and wrong have been done by this nation to the people of China, and therefore ultimately to this Nation itself. Chinese students, business and professional men of all kinds—not only merchants, but bankers, doctors, manufacturers, professors, travelers, and the like—should be encouraged to come here and treated on precisely the same footing that we treat students, business men, travelers, and the like of other nations.