WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 433

been permanently idle, and even those who were employed would have been
subject to staggering cuts in wages. Two men would have been bidding for
every job, each underbidding the other, and wages would have sunk to the bottom
ievel. I need hardly say that with this collapse in wages would have gone a
collapse of our present standard of living. And business itself would have been
disastrously affected; for the greater buyers in our market—our millions of
wage earners—would not have had any approach to their present purchasing
ower.
P “That is what restrictive immigration has done for us all. Many of the countries
 from which our new citizens come still think we passed this legislation as a
sort of racial distinction with a preference for certain races. Even here at home
certain critics hold that view. They are all mistaken. Restrictive immigration
has just one motive behind it, and that was a strictly economic reason. If was
passed for the economic salvation of America—an end which it has triumphantly
attained.”
My study of the problem has convinced me that smuggling and bootlegging are
made easier and the illegal entry of aliens is facilitated along our southern border
due to the fact that both banks of the Rio Grande are controlled by and in the
possession of Mexicans.
When Mexico passed a law prohibiting aliens from owning land within 100
kilometers of the border on her side, our Government refused to allow the Americans
 who owned land within that zone to be ousted officially. But they might
as well have been ousted, for they could not live on their land. Their crops were
stolen, their work animals and agricultural implements carried off, ranches
raided, and the owners shot at or driven out. Some even were assassinated.
Abundant evidence exists to prove that this condition still obtains where Amerieans
 try to make use of land they own on the Mexican side of the border. When
the natives see white people living in comfort and plenty, it seems to fill them
with envy and hatred, and I am reliably informed that they say one to the other,
“Look at those Gringos getting rich off of our country while we are steeped in
poverty.” Therefore, they run the foreigners out for they seem to lack the
ability to attribute the differences in living conditions between the two races to
their own shiftlessness and laziness, to their mongrelization, and to their unwillingness
 to improve their economic and social status. Certainly they can not
attribute their existing standard of living to any niggardness of nature. Indeed,
Mexico reminds one of the story of the hen who starved to death while sitting on
a pile of corn.
This attitude toward foreigners applies not only to those who have property
in Mexico, but dlso to those who have temporary business within the country.
On October 15, 1929, the Mexican Senate approved the bill of professions which
requires all foreign professionals doing business in Mexico to become naturalized
Mexican citizens. It also stipulates that all foreign professional men must pass
examinations at the Mexican National University or at some school under
governmental supervision and that they must be able to read and write Spanish.
The immigration law of Mexico seems to be designed particularly against
Americans. Briefly, it reads that no one may work in Mexico except in such
technical work that it can be demonstrated that no Mexican can do it.
Under the agreement of April 20, 1929, restricting immigration the regulations
of June 17, 1929, state:
(a) Prohibition is absolute as regards workmen who receive a salary or wage
in compensation for their muscular efforts in connection with an industry or
business.
(b) “Professional workmen who enter into confracts to render intellectual
services’ may enter the country if they possess at least 5,000 pesos.
(¢) Foreigners who satisfactorily prove they are imnportant partners in business
sstablished in Mexican territory may enter the country.
(d) “Technical experts who specialize in any line of work and who can not be
substituted by professionals or workmen, Mexican or foreign, residing in the
country,” may also enter the country after the Department of State grants
authorization.
The general rule, especially near the border, seems to be “Gringo, don’t let
the sun go down on you in Mexico.” Of course, in the larger places and cities
like Juarez conditions are not precisely that way, for the Mexican authorities
seem to be in league with the saloon keepers, gambling-house owners, and others
who shake down American tourists, sight-seers, carousers, ete. Such an exception
 to the rule seems to exist near Fabens, Tex., where one may find a saloon
on the Mexican side of the highway. This is the notorious ‘Cantina Colorada,”