Gulick: An Immigration Policy 
The mere fact of race should be neither 
a qualification nor a disqualification. 
Such are the main outlines of the 
proposed Comprehensive and Construc- 
tive Program here offered for the solu- 
tion of the entire immigration problem, 
Asiatic as well as European. For a 
more adequate understanding, however, 
of this general proposal we should 
consider— 
8. A Few Additional Details 
(a) No change should be made in the 
schedule for maximum immigration 
between the census periods. With each 
new census a new schedule should be 
prepared, but it should not go into 
operation automatically. Congress 
should reconsider the whole matter 
once in ten years upon receiving the 
figures based upon the new census, and 
decide either to adopt the new schedule 
or some new percentage rate, or possibly 
to continue the same schedule for an- 
other decade. 
(b) Provision should be made for 
certain excepted classes. Government 
officials, travelers and students would, 
of course, be admitted outside of the 
fixed schedule figures. Aliens who have 
already resided in America and taken 
out their first papers, or who have passed 
all the required examinations, should, 
also, doubtless be admitted freely re- 
gardless of the schedule. Women and 
children under 14 years of age 
should also be included among the 
excepted classes. If thought impor- 
tant, unmarried women 25 years of age 
and over might be subject to the per- 
centage rate. By providing for such 
exceptions the drastic features of the 
proposed plan would be largely, per- 
haps, wholly relieved. 
(c) Should the restriction required 
by the 5 per cent plan be regarded as 
excessively severe, the per cent rate 
could be advanced. In any case it 
seems desirable that the 5 per cent 
restriction should be applied only to 
males 14 years of age and over, and to 
unmarried women 25 years of age and 
over. 
(d) In order to provide for countries 
from which few have become American 
549 
citizens, a minimum permissible annual 
immigration of, say 1,000, might be 
allowed, regardless of the percentage 
rate. 
(e) Registration, with payment of the 
fee, might well be required only of male 
aliens 21 years of age and over. Since, 
however, it is highly desirable that 
immigrant women also should learn the 
English language, provision might be 
made that all alien women should 
register without payment of the fee and 
be given the privileges of education and 
of taking the examinations free of cost. 
This privilege might extend over a 
period of five years. After passing the 
examinations there should be no further 
requirement for registration. If, how- 
ever, after five years the examinations 
have not been passed, then they should 
be required to pay a registration tax of 
six dollars annually, a reduction of one 
dollar being allowed for every examina- 
tion passed. 
(f) In order to meet special cases and 
exigencies, such as religious or political 
persecutions, war, famine or flood, pro- 
vision might well be made to give 
special power to the Commissioner of 
Immigration in consultation with the 
Commissioner of Labor and one or two 
other specified high officials to order 
exceptional treatment. 
(g) The proposed policy, if enacted 
into law, would put into the hands of 
Congress a flexible instrument for the 
continuous and exact regulation of 
immigration, adapting it from time to 
time to the economic conditions of the 
country. 
(h) How the war is to influence future 
immigration is uncertain. Some anti- 
cipate an enormous increase, while 
others expect a decrease. Is it not 
important for Congress to take com- 
plete and exact control of the situation 
while the present lull is on and be able 
to determine what the maximum immi- 
gration shall be before we find ourselves 
overwhelmed with its magnitude’ If 
the post bellum immigration should 
prove to be small, a law limiting it to 
figures proposed by this plan would not 
restrict it. If it should prove to be 
enormous we would be prepared to deal 
with it. 
