THE PROBLEM OF IMMIGRATION. 531 



THE PEOBLEM OF IMMIGRATION. 



BY Dr. ALLAN MCLAUGHLIN, 



U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH AND MARINE HOSPITAL SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



A S has been pointed out, the extension of our immigration inspection 

 -*--*- service to the Canadian and Mexican frontiers, and the splendid 

 work done on the border by the immigration officers, have closed the 

 last gateways open to violators of our immigration laws. Not only are 

 the laws enforced rigidly at United States ports and border towns, but 

 by agreement with the Canadian steamship authorities, American offi- 

 cers are stationed at Quebec, Montreal, Halifax, St. John and Victoria, 

 B. C, for the inspection of immigrants destined to the United States 

 through Canada. Our present immigration laws are effective against 

 many of the most undesirable classes of immigrants and our immigra- 

 tion officers by their vigorous enforcement of these laws have acquired 

 a reputation in Europe which has a deterrent effect upon the undesirable 

 classes. Every defective alien deported to Europe advertises the fact 

 that we will not permit ' paupers, diseased persons or persons likely 

 to become a public charge ' to land. But the law at present is ineffect- 

 ive as applied to the class usually referred to as ( persons of poor 

 physique.' They are admitted because it can not be shown definitely 

 that they are c likely to become a public charge.' They have friends, 

 perhaps, who live in the city and vouch for their ability to earn a living, 

 or their skill in a sweat-shop occupation is accepted as evidence that 

 they will not become dependents. 



In the immigration question, two great problems present themselves, 

 the separation of the undesirable from the desirable classes, and the dis- 

 tribution of our landed immigrants. President Roosevelt in his mes- 

 sage to the Fifty-eighth Congress, December, 1903, with characteristic 

 directness, strikes to the heart of the question, and gives the following 

 concise expression of its problems: 



We can not have too much immigration of the right kind, and we should 

 have none at all of the -wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by 

 which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immi- 

 grants are properly distributed throughout the country. At present some 

 districts which need immigrants have none; and in others, where the population 

 is already congested, immigrants come in such numbers as to depress the 

 conditions of life for those already there. 



This brings us to the question of what constitutes a desirable immi- 

 grant. The first requisite of a desirable immigrant is good physique. 



