Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 4 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 4 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
As I said in my last Message to the Congress, 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
keep them away from the congested tenement-house districts of the great
cities. But 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 all 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 ensure 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
of would-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark
before permitting them to embark.
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