The question recurs, however, is there need of doing anything? As to this President Roosevelt and the Commissioner-General of Immigration are agreed. In his last annual message the President recommended the prohibition of immigration through Canada and Mexico, the strengthening of our exclusion laws, heavier restraints upon the steamship companies, and severer penalties for enticing immigrants. It is a striking fact that nearly all of the proposed additions to our laws are intended to stop the evasion and violation of the laws we have, which are made ineffective by fraud and questionable practices of the most extensive kind. A recent writer[32] presents this matter in condensed form worthy of study, giving this "astonishing catalogue of abuses," brought to light by special inspectors in the employ of the Immigration Bureau: [Sidenote: Astonishing Abuses] "1. The importation of contract laborers, usually under the direction of padrones, from Greece, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. "2. The smuggling of immigrants across the Canadian and Mexican borders who would be certain of rejection at our Atlantic ports. "3. The 'patching up' of immigrants afflicted with favus, trachoma, and other loathsome or contagious diseases so that they can get past the inspectors without detection, even though the process is likely to augment their sufferings later. "4. The forgery and sale of spurious naturalization certificates and the repeated use of the same certificates passed back and forth between relatives and friends. "5. The assisting of immigration, either by local authorities in Europe or by earlier comers in America. "6. The stimulating of immigration by transportation companies and their armies of paid agents and sub-agents in Europe." [Sidenote: A Plain Necessity] As a result, Mr. Ogg says, of the widespread operations through these underground channels there is an abnormal immigration movement so vast as "to override and all but reduce to a mere joke our whole restrictive system. That an appalling number of aliens who are on the verge of dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency do somehow contrive to get into the country every year is a fact too well known to call for verification here. Nobody undertakes to deny it." There is plain necessity, therefore, that some means of redeeming the situation should be found. _II. Proposed Legislation_ [Sidenote: Three Recommendations]