Special Immigrant Inspector.
CHAPTER XXII
WHAT TO DO WITH THE IMMIGRANT
After long and careful study of all the many and complex phases of the immigration question, I have formed a clear and definite idea of what should be done with the immigrant. The first suggestion of it came to me when I saw how grossly I, in common with other Americans of the class that is informed on the average concerning these things, misunderstood the aliens who come to our shores, and when I perceived the first indications of preparation of lies to be told at Naples and at Ellis Island, in order to evade the laws of the United States. Slowly it was demonstrated to me that any system which makes inspection dependent on the word of the immigrant or his friends is radically wrong. Only a conscientious analysis of the whole system allowed me to formulate the proposition I am about to state, and I do it without prejudice, but with strong conviction that it is the correct solution of the gigantic problem.
Immigration must be either controlled and directed or it must be abolished, and the last-named alternative is eliminated by common sense and considerations of a humane nature. We need the immigrants. Our nation owes its strength to-day to those who have crossed the ocean in other years. Our great industries need their brawn, our undeveloped regions need their toil, and we can easily accept 150,000,000 more human beings as raw material; but they must come as raw material,—good raw material. That given, our civic atmosphere, our conditions, our national spirit must do the rest, and patriots must look to the children of the immigrants for the best results rather than to the immigrants themselves.
Diseased, deformed, or physically insufficient persons are not and never can be good raw material, and should not be allowed to leave their homes, nor should any members of their families on whom they are, or are likely to be, dependent.
Convicts, prostitutes, persons engaged in questionable pursuits, anarchists, radical socialists, and political agitators are a menace to the body politic, though reasonable inability to make a livelihood should be considered a mark of pauperism rather than failure to accumulate any property whatsoever under European conditions.
The true conditions of all such persons is readily ascertainable from the civic, police, and military records in the communes of their residence, to which can be added the supplemental evidence of their neighbors and the local officials of the communes. In the communes of their nativity the truth is known and cannot be hidden. At the ports of embarkation combined influences can deceive the best officials. At the ports of arrival the hand of the inspector is still weaker, no matter how thorough the examination or how excellent the system.
The conclusion is plain: seek the grounds on which to deny passage to emigrants who wish to come to the United States, in the villages from which they emanate.
What seems to me to be the best plan to do this, to keep the expense below that which it is at present, and to avoid the opportunities which are sure to be presented for wholesale corruption of American officials by the transportation interests and by the emigrants themselves, is this:
Select emigrants before itinerant boards of two, three, or more native-born Americans who speak fluently and understand thoroughly the language and dialects of the people who come before them,—these boards to be on a civil-service basis.