Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
As I said in my last message to the Congress, we cannot 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
migration 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
contested 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 insure 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 method 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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