The league believes that the present laws are inadequate and that further selection of immigration in necessary and desirable from (a) the social and moral standpoint, (b) the economic standpoint, (c) the eugenic standpoint.
The league recommends that-
1.. A reading test for aliens of 15 years or over in any language or dialect the alien may choose.
2. An increase of the present head tax to at least $1 0.
3. Requiring immigrants to be in possession of money for their support while securing employment; say, $50 for single immigrant and heads of families and $25 additional for a wife and each minor child.
4. Abolishing the existing provision for admitting immigrants on bond.
5. Increasing the fines on steamship companies to $500 and extending the system of fines to all cases where the ineligibility of the alien could have been detected at embarkation by careful inspection.
6. Providing for the deportation of aliens without time limit, for causes, other than due to accident, whether arising prior to or subsequent to landing....
The league believes that, great as is the burden of aliens who fall into the definite classes known as the defectives and delinquents, there is an even greater burden upon and danger to the community from the immigration of large numbers of aliens of low intelligence, poor physique, deficient in energy, ability, and thrift. Many of these have to be supported by public or private charity, are a menace to the average of our population. The league believes that a considerable portion of this class would be excluded by the legislation it proposes, as experience shows that poverty, ignorance, and incapacity in general go together....
... The league would call attention to the following: (1) That the true wealth of a country consists in the character of its institutions and of its people and not in the number of miles of its railways or the rapid exhaustion of its resources. (2) That what demand there is for free immigration has always come from employers who want to force wages down regardless of the effect upon the community. (3) That the immigration of cheap labor has just this effect, forcing the workman already here to lower his standard of living and often to lose his job. (4) That just so far as immigration of cheap labor injures the status of the native workingmen it prevents the immigration of efficient and desirable foreign workingmen who will not come here to compete with cheap labor. Labor economically cheap is more- over never socially cheap....
We should see to it that the breeding of the human race in this country receives the attention which it so surely deserves. We should see to it that we are protected, not merely from the burden of supporting alien dependents, delinquents, and defectives, but from what George William Curtis called "that watering of the nation's lifeblood," which results from their breeding after admission.
A considerable proportion of immigrants now coming are from races and countries, or parts of countries, which have not progressed, but have been back- ward, downtrodden, and relatively useless for centuries. If these immigrants "have not had opportunities," it is because their races have not made the opportunities: for they have had all the time that any other races have had-, in fact, often come from older civilizations. There is no reason to suppose that a change of location will result in a change of inborn tendencies.