Joseph Cannon Quotes

The Immigration Act of 1924 closed our doors to virtually all non-European immigrants - a great wrong that was not rectified for decades.

I have never been in harmony with the proposition to apply the educational test [to immigrants]. If that test had been applied two hundred years ago I have ancestors who never would have gotten in.

We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.

There are compelling reasons to implement a true America First immigration plan, starting with border security. We are a land of immigrants. Immigration, with assimilation, has generally been good for America.

All Americans are either immigrants or descendants of ancestors who came from somewhere else, including Native Americans. We should all respect and admire immigrants.

Resolutions of the State Council of Ohio, Junior Order of United American Mechanics urging passage of laws to prevent the landing on our shores of the vicious, lawless, pauperized, and anarchistic elements of foreign countries.

Immigration policy should be based on what is good for America, not what is good for Mexico. Immigration to America should not be the safety valve for Mexico.

It is said that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.

The reason we have to close the back door of illegal immigration is so that we may keep open the front door of legal immigration.

Deportation is [not] a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.

There is no such thing as free immigration. Every self-governing nation is going to determine what sort of people it will admit through its boundaries.

The illiteracy test will bear most heavily upon the Italians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics, and very lightly, or not at all, upon English-speaking emigrants and Germans, Scandinavians, and French. In other words, the races most affected by the illiteracy test are those…with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are the most alien to the great body of the people of the United States.

If we wish to say that no man shall come here who can not read and write, let us say so; but let us not say that no man shall come here who has a wife who can not read and write, unless he leave her behind…We want members of families. We do not believe that it is better to admit a man, no matter how well educated, to be separated from his family and to live here by himself. It is better neither for the country nor for him.

For many decades the country was very sparsely settled. There was abundant free land. Labor was scarce. The number of immigrants was still very small, and nearly all of them were sturdy pioneers, essentially homogeneous and readily assimilated. There was, therefore, little need to worry about any immigration "problems," and it was comforting to the consciences of our ancestors to keep the doors wide open.

At the opening of the present Congress, it was very offensive to say anything detrimental about the Japanese immigration in the presence of a Congressman or a Senator, and the President of the United States was even reported to have said that if they sent the representatives of the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League to the White House he would deport the members of the committee. The change which has taken place is notable, not only in the halls of legislation in Washington, but in the industrial and commercial centers of the east.

I venture to write and congratulate the League through you upon the progress made toward the ultimate exclusion of Japanese and all Mongolians from our shores.

The first general immigration act was passed as recently as 1882 and provided only for the exclusion of convicts … of lunatics, of idiots, and of persons likely to become a public charge.

Part of our sovereignty as a nation is having an immigration law that we can enforce.

Britain’s efforts to restrict immigration have become “a very large obstacle” to hiring the best scientists.

America's strength in the past has been our ability to bring family members to join other family members in the United States and to look at skills but not have it be the only determination of how you get here.

I'm the granddaughter of immigrants.

I still am amazed by the reaction I get from people when I tell them that there was zero immigration in this country from 1924 to 1965. And the reason that people don't know that, A, they just don't know it, it's not reported, it's never been part of history class, history education.

Donald Trump unveiled his immigration policy and now he's getting a lot of flak. His policy would have prevented his own grandfather from coming to America. That explains his new campaign slogan: 'Vote Trump to prevent another Trump.'

I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.

When someone decides to come to the U.S., he knows what he's getting into.