Aliens or Americans?Grose, Howard B. (Howard Benjamin)
Religion
Aliens or Americans?
Grose, Howard B. (Howard Benjamin)
Noncitizens -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration
There are three propositions further. The first is a measure introduced
into the House by the late Congressman Adams of Pennsylvania. This
would restrict by law the total number of immigrants from any given
country in any one year to 80,000. This would decrease the south of
Europe quota, and might increase that from northern Europe. It would at
any rate tend to stop the million a year rate.
[Sidenote: Itinerant Boards]
The second measure is proposed by Mr. Brandenburg, who feels sure it
would prove the desired remedy. His opinion carries a good deal of
weight. His proposal is to "select emigrants before itinerant boards of
two, three, or more native-born Americans who speak fluently and
understand thoroughly the language and dialects of the people who come
before them--these boards to be on a civil service basis," and to sit at
stated times in the central cities of the countries whence aliens
come.[38] This he believes to be "a correct solution of the gigantic
problem." It would keep expense down, avoid opportunities for wholesale
corruption of American officials by the transportation interests and the
immigrants themselves, and enable the examiners to deny passage to
persons desirous of going to districts already over-populated with
aliens.
[Sidenote: Inspection Abroad]
The third measure is in line with the second, but instead of
establishing itinerant boards of examiners, it proposes to select
fifteen or twenty ports abroad which shall be made exclusive points for
the embarkation of emigrants bound for the United States. Mr. Ogg states
the plan as follows:
[Sidenote: List of Cities]
"Perhaps an adequate list would be Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Rotterdam,
Antwerp, London, Southampton, Liverpool, Havre, St. Nazaire, Marseilles,
Fiume, Trieste, Naples, Genoa, and Odessa. At each of these ports should
be located an immigrant station, similar, in a general way, to the
immigrant stations at our larger Atlantic ports to-day, and it should be
made the duty of the resident commissioners, with their staffs of
inspectors and medical attaches, to examine carefully and minutely every
man, woman, and child of alien nationality who applies for passage to
the United States. Successful applicants should be given a certificate
which alone would enable them to land at the port of destination; those
unsuccessful should be made to understand then and there that, in their
present state at least, there is no chance for them to carry out their
intention of migration, and that the best thing for them to do is to
return to their homes."[39]
[Sidenote: Do the Sifting in Europe]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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