If the pending immigration bill represents the sum total of the wisdom we can summon on the first subject, we shall fail miserably to improve this opportunity by substituting a constructive policy for our prevailing negative policy. Such arbitrary tests as the literacy clause based on race and class theories and antagonisms bear no real or lasting relation to the fundamental national needs of the country. This country needs a statesmanlike policy in its international relations based not upon theoretical makeshifts, but upon _a knowledge of existing conditions_, upon capacity for assimilating the immigrant, and upon our power to develop the machinery which will make assimilation possible. Admission of aliens to this country should be based upon their capacity for Americanization. Any exclusion laws should look to the raising of the physical standard, owing to the results of the privations and hardships of war, with greater emphasis on deportation for crime. I believe that every incoming immigrant should declare upon arrival his or her intention to remain here and become a citizen. Every immigrant should be required to become literate in the English language (the minimum standard to be definitely set) within five years after arrival, provided facilities are offered him. Deportation should be the penalty for failure to do so. With the probable increase in the immigration of women and children, every safeguard should be thrown about their admission, arrival, and distribution. A policy of distribution should be worked out. This again requires three fundamental lines of activity--agricultural organization which will enable the land to compete with industry for the laborer and settler; the development of a rural credit system which will enable people to go to the land; and a national system of government employment agencies and the regulation of all private agencies doing an interstate business. All of the civic and stimulated “back to the land” schemes are doomed to failure until these three questions are solved. Industry will get the great mass of the immigrants as long as it offers higher wages, steadier employment, decent conditions and opportunities for advancement; and so long as, unlike agriculture, it has the organization to reach the aliens on or before arrival.