National origins provision of immigration law

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1796380105

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-196168

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: National origins provision of immigration law

Place of publication:: Washington

Publisher:: Gov. Pr. Off.

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: III, 171 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Statement of John B. Trevor, National Immigration Restriction Conference, New York City

Collection:: Economics Books

50 NATIONAL ORIGINS PROVISION OF IMMIGRATION LAW Senator Nye. Not at all. The Cratrman. Then, I suggest you pass to another subject, be- cause the matter of constitutionalitv. unless Senator Reed desires it particularly—— Senator Reep. No. I myself have never heard a lawyer even ques- tion the constitutionality of any of these bases of calculating the quota. The CuArMAN . If in these hearings anybody shall attack it here- after, we will give you ample opportunity to respond. Mr. Trevor. Thank you. I would like to curtail my remarks as far as possible. The CramrmaN. Let us eliminate that portion then. Mr. Trevor. Yes; I will eliminate all further reference to that. Now, as to the question of accuracy of the statistics: All the organ- izations which I represent are so perfectly convinced of the absolute impartiality and integrity of Doctor Hill and his associates that we never for a moment questioned that a perfectly fair apportionment of the population has been made. The question of accuracy, of course, is relative. Absolute accuracy in any census has never been attained. It probably was more nearly attained in the earlier census than it has ever been attained in the more recent census. Therefore, I would like to speak briefly and say that our understanding of the purposes of Congress in passing the act of 1924 was to maintain an approximation of the status quo of our population as it was in 1920. Now, that was very specifically stated in the House reports. I will not burden you with repeating what is already a matter of public record, but the public at large who have been talking against the na- tional origins provisions are not aware that that was the attitude un- questionably of the Congress and the committees before this act of 1924 was passed. It hag already been set forth, and Doctor Hill has testified before this committee, that the 1890 census base in no way represents a cross section of the population. That is perfectly obvious. We would be talking German to-day or some other languages if that did represent it; and I would like to say in that connection that when the United States Government drafted the youth of the country into the war it never would have considered for a moment the idea of taking an arbitrary census bage as the basis for the draft; it took all the people, and it is on that basis that we are arguing here to-day. And we believe that those figures worked out by the board of experts are substantially accurate. In that connection it has been repeatedly asserted, as I have already alluded to in my testimony, the fact that the 1890 census ficures were absolutely based on a known and established body of statistics, and it is said that the divergencies between the preliminary report of the committee of experts, and their final report is sufficient to discredit the final report. It is not generally known that there are much greater divergencies in the principal quotas concerned, and I believe in every quota there is greater or less divergence, between the figures which were submitted to Congress as representative of what 2 per cent of the 1890 foreign-born would be, and those which were subsequently pro-

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