Evening Star Newspaper, July 24, 1932, Page 58

2 - THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JULY 24, 1932 parentage. It is forgotten, too, by some of those who still demand removal of immigration restrictions that even in the years of “boom” and prosperity new mechanical equipment and improved machinery were steadily reducing the need for labor, cutting down jobs on rail- roads, in factories and even in telephone operation. On the farms, too, not nearly 50 many “hands” were required as farm machinery developed. II\MGRATION restriction came not as a matter of prejudice, but as a matter of vital, national self-defense; defense of the jobs and opportunities of our workers. It came, undoubtedly, some- what too late to be of the greatest use- fulness; but the condition of the United States today would be incalculably worse were it not for the immigration barriers. As this is written there is nearing New York City a whole trainload of immi- grants—outward bound. The train started, in sections, at San Francisco and Los Angeles. It grew steadily as the con- tinent was crossed, and to it were added cars that came up from the Southwest and down from the North. From all parts of the country, big cities and little towns, that train is drawing passengers; aliens who have no right to remain in this country; many who had no right to enter in the first place, and came in as law-breakers. At New York City the train will come to a stop and its passen- gers will be embarked upon boats for the countries from which they came. The deportation trains run westward, too, picking up deportable aliens who are going back to the Orient, whence they came uninvited and illegally. Those trains have been crossing and recrossing .the couriry all through the months of this year and last year. They will continue to ryn as long as we find deportable aliens—and the end is not yet iff sight. We sent 18,142 aliens out of the country last year, and ‘we sent out 16,021 during the first four months of 1932. Many other thousands are going, by request, without the issuance of orders of deportation, in the hope that they may be legally readmitted in years to come under the quota provisions of the law. But those whom we are obliged to eject by deportation warrant proceedings may never come back unless, in meri- torious cases, they receive permission from the department. Undoubtedly the deportations occasion some hardship to some of those deported. But there is hardship also to thousands of American citizens who are idle be- cause the jobs they could fill are held by foreign-born men and women who en- tered this country illegally, knowing that they were law-breakers—and who paid high for that “privilege.” Secretary Doak, who has labored un- ceasingly to bring about a higher degree of immigration law enforcement, has estimated that there are at least 400,000 aliens illegally in this country. The probabilities are that there are many more than that. THE public is excited to sympathy occa- sionally for alien deportees by stories - of hardship arising out of enforcement of the law. But there is another side to the picture that the public seldom glimpses; the hardship inflicted upon our own people through evasion of the immigration laws. That hardship may have come about through displacement of half a dozen American-born musicians in an orchestra by aliens, willing to work for much less, who came in as “artists” under a special provision of the law, which now is amended to prevent such injustice. One of our inspectors accompanying the deportation trains recently told me that he was moved to sympathy by the pathetic story of “injustice” related to him by a woman who was being deported. She said that she had established a little cigar counter and lunch business in a Western city and was doing well with it, using part of the profits to support an aged father and mother in Europe. But a competitor, she said, had become jeal- - ous of her success, sought to buy her lease, and when he failed, reported her. The inspector on his next trip West took time to investigate the case and found the facts quite.different Her cigar and lunch counter, it was discovered, had been merely a blind to cover her real business of procuress. We deported from one of the larger cities a year or two ago an alien who had entered the country illegally to escape the consequences of crime com- mitted in his own land, and who had promptly resumed his criminal career in the United States. Through association with a group of racketeers he had ac- From paioting by Devitt Weish. courtesy of Grace Line. “Immigration restrictions are a matter of vital national self-defense.” cumulated $90,000 1n 11 months. He was anxious to leave the city where we arrested him, for fear his own gang would turn on him; but he wanted to be deported to some other country than that of his origin because of his previous criminal record there. When he went out from our shores this nation and its citizens benefited. Now, the great trouble is that while we know there are thousands of aliens here who have no right to be in this country, it may be years—and it may be forever—before we discover some of those who should go out. Meantime, they are preying not only upon our citi- zens, but upon their fellow countrymen who are in America legally. One of the meanest and lowest of these classes is composed of those who are en- gaged in smuggling in other aliens—and who then prey upon them, by extorting blackmail, under threat of disclosing their illegal entry to the immigration authorities. We even know of cases of aliens murdered as they were being smuggled in, when the smugglers found themselves in danger of detection, and pushed the “human contraband” over- board from the boat in which they were being smuggled. SOME’I‘IMES violations of the immigra- tion laws cost the nation @early, even when an alien is within our bordcrs only a year or two. For instance, a 16-year- old boy who enteted the United States surreptitiously in 1928 was not discovered by the immigration authorities until last January. He had then been sentenced to the penitentiary on a charge of aggra- vated robbery. After the sentence, but before his case came to the attention of our men, he had become violently in- sane. Doctors certified that this dis- ability had been present when the boy illegally entered the United States, and he was deported. But our people had to pay for this violation in the economic and personal losses between entry and deportation. Also, there are thousands of American men and women who are paying month after month, through unemployment and consequent resort to charity, for the illegal entry of aliens. This is not a mere figment of the imagination; daily we are finding aliens working in factories, or on street jobs, who climbed down a ship’s side in one of our ports, knowing they were violating our laws, and have been working here ever since—sometimes be- cause they could be hired for much less than American citizens with an Ameri- can standard of living. And with one of our own people in that job the money earned would be spent here in America, giving work_to still other Americans, in- stead of being sent across the ocean 10 a country which perhaps za2lmost com- pletely bars our products. There often is this double loss in the employment of aliens. Thousands have managed to make their way into this country because they were in trouble with the criminal law of their own; and often they seek our shores not as a place of reformation, but as a place to continue their criminal careers, Records back up this statement in thousands of cases. From July, 1930, to July, 1931, for instance, we deported 2,719 aliens of the criminal or immoral classes. Of this number 856 had been convicted of grave crimes and 917 others were criminals at the time of their entry to the United States. We have enough criminals of our own, I should say, with- out importing any such talent from -abroad! Dairymen May Face Overproduction A TENDENCY of the last few years to bring more dairy herds into production in the early Fall has resulted in a prospective increase of 13 per cent this Fall in the number of dairy cows producing. This means that in some sections there is to be a considerably greater supply of milk than last year, despite the warn- ing of the Department of Agriculture that milk production now has almost reached the satura- tion point and may bring about much less profit to the dairy farmer. The reasons for the trend from Spring fresh- ening to Fall are to be found largely in the price of feed. The so-called Winter dairy system permits the farmer to spend more time with his dairy at the time of the year when his other activities are less pressing. In Summer, if the herds are in the peak of their production, the time required in handling the milk interferes greatly with the other farm activities and might easily result in unsatis- factory cultivation and harvesting. In the Winter, when there is little to do, com- paratively speaking, the farmer finds his dairy work less pressing from the time point of view. although freezing weather raises its own peculiar problems. Generally speaking, when feed prices are high, the Summer dairy is the more profitable, for the farmer then can turn his herd into pasture for much of the food suply and in Winter he has a minimum of feed to purchase, because when milk production is low it is only necessary to feed a small amount of feed over the so-called maintenance ration. However, if feed prices are low, the low cost often -justifies the farmer to concentrate his time in the growing season to other activities and feed heavily in Winter of purchased feeds. Of course, feed and feed costs are not the only considerations that influence a dairy farmer in choosing between Winter and Summer dairies. In Summer the question of keeping the milk cold is a problem and one far more serious than a first consideration might suggest. It is a general condition that milk received at a milk station or manufacturing plant must be at or below 55 degrees when received. Milk above that point is subject to rejection. That brings up the problems of icing or cooling in wells, the latter a tedious and unsatisfactory system. In carrying on the necessary work of deportation every effort is made to safe- guard individual rights so that no one will be dealt with unjustly. Hearings and reviews are given by the Depart- ment of Labor, and in addition the courts are available to protect the aliens. The steadfast policy has been to protect our own citizens, but at the same time to adhere to the principle of being humane in enforcing the laws. The Govern- ment’s course was thus defined by Presi- dent Hoover in a message to Congress: “The deportation laws should be strengthened. Aliens lawfully in the country should be protected by the issuance of a certificate of residence.” WHAT is meant can be illustrated by the facts of one of many similar cases. A boy from Southern Europe landed as a seaman in New York in 1920. He was not eligible to come in as an im- migrant, and, knowing that, he simply deserted the ship and “slid” into the country, finally settling in a Middle Western city. He made a living at first by selling fruit from a pushcart. Later he was able to establish a store, and prospered. He married and had several children. All went well until one day a fellow countryman, who also had been a seaman on the same ship, happened into the store and recognized the pro- prietor as a fellow shipmate—and de- serter. This second man was one of the type who live by their wits rather than by their work. He promptly began making “loans” from the merchant, under veiled threats of disclosure to im- migration authorities. The merchant knew he had entered the country illegally; he was afraid of the deporta- tion law and afraid even to consult a lawyer for help. But finally, when the demands of the racketeer became so frequent and heavy that the solvency of his business was threatened, the mer- chant did consult an attortey. The re- sult was that the merchant was properly registered under the law—and the blackmailer was deported. This happy attainment was made pos- sible by the enactment in 1929 of a law authorizing the creation of a record of registry for aliens who entered the country before June 3, 1921. Such reg- istration clears the way for naturaliza- tion, so that many thousands of foreign born may become American citizens even though their entry inte the country was illegal or the record of legal entry has been lost or kept defectively. Of course one of the requisites to such registration is that the alien applying for it shall show good character and a record free of convictions for any serious offense. Tens of thousands of foreign-born residents have already registered; many of them are old people with grand- children who have urged them to take the steps leading to naturalization so that the descendants might proudly say: “I'm an American citizen, and so were my grandfather and grandmother!” As the law is now, there are thousands of foreign-born men and women in the country who arrived and made unau- thorized entry after June 3, 1921, but be- fore July 1, 1924. If they are law abiding they are not, generally speaking, sub- ject to deportation. On the other hand, they cannot become American citizens because they eannot prove legal entyy. They therefore are what might be termed an “undigested mass.” “There is pending in Congress a bill which if enacted would permit us to extend the benefits of registration to this class and thus enable the Nation to assimilate fully these people, who will be here permanently in any event. That is an evidence of the desire not toc be “oppressive” in our handling of the alien situation. Another fact which illuminates the whole spirit of our deal- ing with aliens is that in many cases we do not issue orders of deportation— though we send the aliens out—so that they can apply for re-entry under the quota law. Otherwise the permanent breaking up of a family might result. Furthermore, under a recently enacted law we have made it possible even for formally deported aliens, in meritorious cases, to reapply for admission. Our immigration laws, as a matter of fact, while restrictive and protective in character, are not a whit more severe than the laws of countries across the seas. In some nations citizens as well as aliens are registered, and in some they may not even move from one town to another, or from one street address to another, without a permit or new registration. But we have no such bur- densome system in this country.