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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 24, 15 June 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The campaign against “aliens” has reached such proportions that a call for mass murder has issued directly from the floor of the United States Congress. Representative Robert F. Rich (Rep., Pa.) on May 29 made the following remarks (Congressional Record, page 10811):
“I think we ought to make every effort in this country to find those people who came to this country who are trying to overthrow our government and nothing should stop this Congress from either deporting them or putting them in concentration camps, and if we know they are going to do anything to overthrow our government, we ought to find a good brick wall, put them up against it, and get our bayonets out, and if necessary use them.”
On May 30, Attorney General Ellis Arnall of Georgia proposed to Georgia Congressmen to remove the guarantee of the United States Constitution which formally gives rights to all residents of the country, irrespective of place of birth or citizenship status. Along with this comes the Smith Bill providing for finger-printing of immigrants, for deportation of non-citizens who belonged to a proscribed organization at any time in the past.
Such is the situation in the land which for centuries was known as the traditional asylum for the persecuted of all lands. Such is the situation in the land which during the days of capitalist progress invited more than 37,000,000 immigrants, to dig its coal, make its steel, build its railroads, pick its crops, cultivate its fields and produce riches for the wealthy. Many of these immigrants were brought by soliciting companies, thousands of others were kidnapped and shipped here in loads. “Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is still the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Now that the capitalist class is in a blind alley, madly racing towards war, it seeks to turn all its wrath against those who created its wealth.
When an alien worker is arrested by the Immigration Service for deportation he is not even accorded a trial by court or jury. He is tried by an immigration inspector, who acts both as judge, prosecutor and jury, who alone finds the facts and makes the record. He then presents them to the Secretary of Labor. There is no review directly from the Secretary’s order to any court. It is final so long as it has been shown that there was merely some evidence to support the decision and the hearing not grossly unfair.
And yet Congress has just passed a law transferring the Immigration Service from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice, on the ground that the Labor Department “does not adequately enforce the immigration laws”! This measure is calculated to put the supervision of the alien workers directly under the FBI. Roosevelt’s request for speedy enactment of this law prevented any public hearing on the bill by any committee of Congress. What a strange contrast to the LaFollette Bill which attempted to remove certain oppressive labor practises – such as labor spying, etc., which took more than three years for passage by the Senate. And when passed it is saddled with an amendment forbidding the employment of more than 10% of non-citizen workers in any interstate industry, and other reactionary features.
With regard to these anti-alien bills now pending, it is very important to point out an extremely significant feature of this legislation, which at just a glance may appear to be entirely remote from the subject. It is the relation between the poll-tax and these anti-alien bills. The overwhelming mass of the anti-alien legislation comes precisely from those districts where alien workers are almost unknown and the foreign- born population negligible.
One would think that if the foreign-born workers represented a real danger to the bosses, the Congressional representatives of the big industrial areas, where the foreign-born workers are concentrated, would be the logical ones to propose these anti-alien measures. On the contrary, however, these Congressional lackeys of the bosses, are to a considerable degree still dependent on the votes of the foreign-born workers. Hence there is a nefarious division of labor between representatives of the large industrial states and those Southern states where the vote is very restricted by poll taxes and other requirements, which work particularly well in disfranchising native workers, especially Negroes.
Below are listed four of the most prominent alien-baiters who are responsible for the bulk of the most vicious anti-alien legislation, and the total vote by which they were elected. They are all representatives from states where the suffrage is very restricted, where Negroes are systematically disfranchised and where poll-tax systems are a venerable tradition.
|
Rep. Joe Stevens |
9,853 |
|
Rep. Sam Hobbs |
12,603 |
|
Rep. Martin Dies |
12,824 |
|
Rep. Howard Smith |
13,852 |
Congressman Lee E. Geyer, of California, who supplied the above figures, contrasts them with the number cast in an election for a representative who opposed the anti-alien bills, Magnussen of Washington, who polled 177,061 – fifteen and twenty times the number of votes polled by the alien-baiters!
It is also noteworthy, that the poll tax states (Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Tenn., Georgia, Alabama Mississippi and Arkansas, wield the greatest amount of power in Congress. They furnish 28% of the committee chairmen in the House, and 33% of the committee chairmen in the Senate, in addition to the presiding officers in both houses. They also supply 45% of the chairmen of the eleven leading standing committees of the Senate.
Thus the systematic disfranchisement of the native population goes hand in hand with the most brazen attack on the foreign-born. In fact it can be fairly said that, in order to more intensely exploit the native workers, it is necessary for the bosses to begin with the foreign-born workers.
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