TRANSPORTATION OF IMMIGRANTS ON AMERICAN SHIPS.

COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Thursday, May 4, 1922.

The committee met at 10.30 a. m. with Hon. Albert Johnson, chairman, pre-
siding.

Present also were Hon. E. J. Henning, Assistant Secretary of Labor, and Mr.
W. J. Peters, law officer of the Bureau of Immigration.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. Let me state that members
were called together to-day for the purpose of giving study to the provisions of
Title IV of bill H. R. 10644, introduced in the House by Mr. Greene, of Massa-
chusetts) and referred to the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries.
It is a bill to amend and supplement the merchant marine act of 1920, and
Title IV, to which I have referred, deals with immigration. The text indicates
an effort to make sure that ships under American registry shall participate in the
commercial immigration business.

Members of this committee will remember that at the request of the com-
mittee, when we had a similar plan before us last February, I sent a letter to
the State Department about it. I wrote, at the request of the committee, as
follows:

The SECRETARY OF STATE,

Washington, D. C.

FEBRUARY 9, 1922.

SIR: This committee has under consideration the framing of a bill to limit
the immigration of aliens into the United States, to become effective at the
expiration, on June 30, 1922, of the present per centum act approved May 19,
1921. It has been proposed to the committee by the United States Shipping Board
that the new bill contain a provision whereby no more than 50 per cent of the
quota of immigrants provided for may be admitted to the United States unless
transported in vessels documented under the laws of the United States, and that
in the case of immigrants from countries which possess no merchant marine the
entire quota must be, transported in American vessels. In other words, what
is desired is that the transportation of not less than 50 per cent of the quota
shall be in American vessels in the case of nations which possess a merchant
marine, and that 100 per cent of the quota shall be transported in American
vessels in the case of nations without a merchant marine. With this sugges-
tion the committee is sympathetic, and it also has the approval of the Com-
missioner General of Immigration.

In order to carry out the proposal in a manner which will insure its most
effective operation and at the same time prevent undue hardship to the immi-
grant, it is suggested that provision be made for the issuance of consular vises
or consular certificates to all aliens who shall be subject to the operation of
the quota act seeking to embark for the United States, such visés or certifi-
cates to be limited each month to the total of the quota of aliens of each na-
tionality for that month; each visé or certificate to provide on its face that it
is available for travel in a foreign vessel or a vessel of American registry, as
the case may be. In carrying out this plan the consular representatives will
be furnished with the quota for each month, and will issue visés or certificates
in some form of rotation to be determined upon, first for transportation in
foreign vessels and then for transportation in American vessels, thus insuring
that for each month an equal number of visés or certificates will be issued for
transportation in each class of vessels. In the case of immigrants of a na-
tionality which possesses no merchant marine, there will be but one variety of
visé or certificate, namely, that for transportation in American vessels. The
precise method in which this will be done may properly be left to the deter-
mination of the Department of State, with the cooperation of the Commissioner
General of Immigration.

557

If this plan is carried out, the result will be that any alien arriving in America with a consular visé or certificate of the class required for the vessel on which he travels will be certain of his admission, provided he otherwise complies with the requirements of the immigration law. He will no longer be exposed to the risk of being sent back because the quota of his nationality has been exhausted.

The committee will be glad to know whether, from the point of view of the Department of State, there are any insuperable obstacles to the carrying out of this plan. It will also be glad to receive any suggestions that may occur to you in connection with it.

Respectfully,

(Signed)

ALBERT JOHNSON,

Chairman.

To that letter I have received no reply. But I think it is right to say that I think the representatives of the State Department were here at some of those hearings and gave the impression that the State Department preferred not to be a party to the plan to devise two forms of visé. If that statement was not made here before the committee, it was made to me personally by some State Department officials down there.

Mr. RAKER. This legislation proposes in this bill, commencing on page 8, section 40 (H. R. 10644) and the other matters that were presented to the committee relative to requiring as a condition to admittance of certain aliens that they must come on American ships, under American registry, or otherwise they would not be admissible, and that is a condition of their admission into the United States after we have passed laws allowing certain aliens to come in if they are otherwise admissible.

The sole purpose of this bill is the building up of our merchant marine and the building up of industry of American vessels, or making money for American citizens owning American vessels, or under American registry; that we take that method of building up the merchant marine, and during all these hearings, up to the present time, we have no law, and do not even attempt now to make any, even under the present tariff, that we shall require the importation of goods to come into America-at least half of them-so that we could honestly and legitimately and properly require goods to come into America in American ships and under American registry. We can do it now instead of dealing with human beings. To build up our merchant marine, we should require goods to come into this country in American ships. It does seem to me that it is a most novel position that these men seeking this legislation do not try to seek some legislation regarding the importation of goods if this principle is good to be applied to human beings.

Mr. VAILE. Your position seems to be that if we can not get what is due us from Smith that we should not get what is due us from Jones.

Mr. RAKER. No. If we can get what is due from Smith, if we can enforce this legislation, why are we so weak and jellyfish-like that we do not try to get it made applicable to goods? I want a hearing on that.

The CHAIRMAN. We have got some other matters for immediate attention, but I will answer your statement. In the first place, we have a law, the Jones Act, which undertook to provide conditions under which ships could come into American ports and take away American goods, and a certain clause in it is not effective. It violates treaties, and neither President Wilson or President Harding would nullify the treaties. In the second place, I presume those who have made a study of economics hold that by law you can not very well arrange matters so that a nation may require all the goods brought to it to come in the bottoms of that nation and then carry on an export business (which all prosperous nations desire) by attempting to enact a law that all exports shall go out only in the vessels of that nation. There must be an equity in the matter, and that, of course, is the reason that tariff bills have not provided that goods shall go and come in American vessels.

Mr. RAKER. Immigraion is commerce, and comes under the commerce clause of the Constitution, and under treaties on commerce with other nations.

Mr. Box. I understand that the decisions under which immigration was finally placed under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress-the cases in the Supreme Court of the United States-were based on the idea that it (immigration), too, was commerce.

The CHAIRMAN, I do not know.