“Department of State. “Washington, August 11, 1902. “EXCELLENCY:――In the course of an instruction recently sent to the Minister accredited to the Government of Roumania in regard to the base of negotiations begun with that government looking to a convention of naturalization between the United States and Roumania, certain considerations were set forth for the Minister’s guidance concerning the character of the immigration from that country, the causes which constrain it, and the consequences so far as they adversely affect the United States. “It has seemed to the President appropriate that these considerations, relating as they do to the obligations entered into by the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, should be brought to the attention of the Governments concerned, and commended to their consideration in the hope that, if they are so fortunate as to meet the approval of the several Powers, such measures as to them may seem wise may be taken to persuade the Government of Roumania to reconsider the subject of the grievances in question. “The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the foundation of its Government, the voluntary immigration of all aliens coming hither under conditions fitting them to become merged in the body politic of this land. Our laws provide the means for them to become incorporated indistinguishably in the mass of citizens, and prescribe their absolute equality with the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil rights at home and equal protection abroad. The conditions are few, looking to their coming as free agents, so circumstanced physically and morally as to supply the healthful and intelligent material for free citizenhood. The pauper, the criminal, the contagiously or incurably diseased are excluded from the benefit of immigration only when they are likely to become a source of danger or a burden upon the community. The voluntary character of their coming is essential; hence we shut out all immigration assisted or constrained by foreign agencies. The purpose of our generous treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him alike――not to afford to another state a field upon which to cast its own objectionable elements. The alien, coming hither voluntarily and prepared to take upon himself the preparatory and in due course the definite obligations of citizenship, retains hereafter, in domestic and international relations, the initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of which it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him.