Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The officers of the Treasury Department and of the Department of Justice
have used every means at their command to intercept this immigration; but
the impossibility of perfectly guarding our extended frontier is apparent.
The Dominion government collects a head tax of $50 from every Chinaman
entering Canada, and thus derives a considerable revenue from those who
only use its ports to reach a position of advantage to evade our exclusion
laws. There seems to be satisfactory evidence that the business of passing
Chinamen through Canada to the United States is organized and quite active.
The Department of Justice has construed the laws to require the return of
any Chinaman found to be unlawfully in this country to China as the country
from which he came, notwithstanding the fact that he came by way of Canada;
but several of the district courts have in cases brought before them
overruled this view of the law and decided that such persons must be
returned to Canada. This construction robs the law of all effectiveness,
even if the decrees could be executed, for the men returned can the next
day recross our border. But the only appropriation made is for sending them
back to China, and the Canadian officials refuse to allow them to reenter
Canada without the payment of the fifty-dollar head tax. I recommend such
legislation as will remedy these defects in the law.
In previous messages I have called the attention of Congress to the
necessity of so extending the jurisdiction of the United States courts as
to make triable therein any felony committed while in the act of violating
a law of the United States. These courts can not have that independence and
effectiveness which the Constitution contemplates so long as the felonious
killing of court officers, jurors, and witnesses in the discharge of their
duties or by reason of their acts as such is only cognizable in the State
courts. The work done by the Attorney-General and the officers of his
Department, even under the present inadequate legislation, has produced
some notable results in the interest of law and order.
The Attorney-General and also the Commissioners of the District of Columbia
call attention to the defectiveness and inadequacy of the laws relating to
crimes against chastity in the District of Columbia. A stringent code upon
this subject has been provided by Congress for Utah, and it is a matter of
surprise that the needs of this District should have been so long
overlooked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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