Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
I recommend to the Congress that an act be past specifically providing
for the naturalization of Japanese who come here intending to become
American citizens. One of the great embarrassments attending the
performance of our international obligations is the fact that the
Statutes of the United States are entirely inadequate. They fail to
give to the National Government sufficiently ample power, through
United States courts and by the use of the Army and Navy, to protect
aliens in the rights secured to them under solemn treaties which are
the law of the land. I therefore earnestly recommend that the criminal
and civil statutes of the United States be so amended and added to as
to enable the President, acting for the United States Government, which
is responsible in our international relations, to enforce the rights of
aliens under treaties. Even as the law now is something can be done by
the Federal Government toward this end, and in the matter now before me
affecting the Japanese everything that it is in my power to do will be
done, and all of the forces, military and civil, of the United States
which I may lawfully employ will be so employed. There should, however,
be no particle of doubt as to the power of the National Government
completely to perform and enforce its own obligations to other nations.
The mob of a single city may at any time perform acts of lawless
violence against some class of foreigners which would plunge us into
war. That city by itself would be powerless to make defense against the
foreign power thus assaulted, and if independent of this Government it
would never venture to perform or permit the performance of the acts
complained of. The entire power and the whole duty to protect the
offending city or the offending community lies in the hands of the
United States Government. It is unthinkable that we should continue a
policy under which a given locality may be allowed to commit a crime
against a friendly nation, and the United States Government limited,
not to preventing the commission of the crime, but, in the last resort,
to defending the people who have committed it against the consequences
of their own wrongdoing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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