Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
between the United States and Italy, which stipulates that "The citizens
of each of the high contracting parties shall receive, in the States and
Territories of the other, most constant protection and security for their
persons and property, and shall enjoy in this respect the same rights and
privileges as are or shall be granted to the natives, on their submitting
themselves to the conditions imposed upon the natives," the bill so
introduced and reported provided that any act committed in any State or
Territory of the United States in violation of the rights of a citizen or
subject of a foreign country secured to such citizen or subject by treaty
between the United States and such foreign country and constituting a crime
under the laws of the State or Territory shall constitute a like crime
against the United States and be cognizable in the Federal courts. No
action was taken by Congress in the matter.
I earnestly recommend that the subject be taken up anew and acted upon
during the present session. The necessity for some such provision
abundantly appears. Precedent for constituting a Federal jurisdiction in
criminal cases where aliens are sufferers is rationally deducible from the
existing statute, which gives to the district and circuit courts of the
United States jurisdiction of civil suits brought by aliens where the
amount involved exceeds a certain sum. If such jealous solicitude be shown
for alien rights in cases of merely civil and pecuniary import, how much
greater should be the public duty to take cognizance of matters affecting
the lives and the rights of aliens tinder the settled principles of
international law no less than under treaty stipulation, in cases of such
transcendent wrong-doing as mob murder, especially when experience has
shown that local justice is too often helpless to punish the offenders.
After many years of endeavor on the part of this Government to that end the
Italian Government has consented to enter into negotiations for a
naturalization convention, having for one of its objects the regulation of
the status of Italians (except those of an age for active military service)
who, having been naturalized in the United States, may revisit Italy. It is
hoped that with the mutually conciliatory spirit displayed a successful
conclusion will be reached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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