Mr. CARR. He would have to rely on the interpreter; any consul has to rely on an interpreter, unless he himself knows all the languages, but his responsibility lies in selecting the right kind of an interpreter, and retaining him only so long as he is satisfied that he is honest and straightforward.

Mr. CABLE. That is about as far as his responsibility goes under the proposed bill or under procedure?

Mr. CARR. It is bound to be so.

Mr. SABATH. That applies to all other business?

Mr. CARR. That applies to all other business.

The CHAIRMAN. It is proposed in two places in the bill that there shall be a fee of $2 for the application and a fee of $2 for the certificate. That money would go into the Treasury?

Mr. CARR. $4 altogether.

The CHAIRMAN. In addition all the visé fees?

Mr. CARR. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That sum, from 250,000 aliens, would bring in a sum sufficient to pay the expense of setting up this examination, would it not, and filling out the questionnaire?

Mr. CARR. May I ask how many immigrants you would expect to permit to enter?"

The CHAIRMAN. Four to five hundred thousand.

Mr. CARR. Four to five hundred thousand.

The CHAIRMAN. The amount would be a million and a half or thereabouts increased revenue.

Mr. SABATH. And in addition thereto you will be receiving visé fees from nonimmigrants.

Mr. CARR. Yes.

Mr. SABATH. Aliens who will be retained.

Mr. CARR. Do I understand the fees for service for immigrants will be abolished and nonimmigrants will be retained?

The CHAIRMAN. One procedure is to abolish the passport fee on immigrants and nonquotas-immigrants alone.

Mr. CARR. Immigrants alone?

Not that I am

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir; immigrants alone. Mr. CARR. That would reduce the revenue. advocating the retention of the high fees or of any fee at all so far as nonimmigrants are concerned; but I am merely making clear the effect of the proposals you mention.

The CHAIRMAN. The bulk of your revenue comes from immigration? Mr. CARR. Yes. It is estimated that the number of immigrants who pay fees are somewhere about 400,000 a year.

Mr. PORTER. May I make a statement? Why not modify the bill so as to provide that the immigrant now present a petition setting out the facts stated in pages 1 and 2, and if the petition discloses any fact which makes the immigrant excludable under the laws of the United States, then an officer or consul can refuse the visé? That would meet the situation in a very simple way, and I want to say to you that while I assume that would be a matter for the Foreign Affairs Committee, still I know there would be no objection to it. I would raise none, if this committee puts that provision in the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. That was one reason why we wanted to have you sit with us.

Mr. PORTER. So that I make myself clear, you have got to broaden the powers of consuls in matters of viséing passports. You can broaden them as much as you want to broaden them, to the extent of your bill, and that would give him the power to take up the petition, look it over, and if he finds in the petition anything which would exclude the immigrant under the laws of the United States he has the right to refuse the visé. Then if it is found out that a man has deliberately lied in his petition, and comes over to the United States before it is discovered, and he is excluded, there is no one to blame but himself. Certainly there will be no blame on the Government of the United States.

Mr. McREYNOLDS. Do you think that should come under a special act?

Mr. PORTER. If you want a bill of that sort I will be glad to put it on. I am at the will of the committee in the matter. It ought to be in here.

Mr. VINCENT. So that the consul denies the visé and the immigration certificate at the same time and for the very same reason?

Mr. PORTER. Exactly. I might suggest further: I think that it is a safe statement that there has not been an immigration law passed in the last 40 years which has not been vetoed by the President.

Mr. Box. There is one exception, President Harding's quota law. Mr. CABLE. I want to ask you, Mr. Carr, when these aliens line up to have their passports viséed is the American consul present at all when they fill out the application blank? Is he there to listen?

Mr. CARR. Do you care if I ask Mr. Huddel to answer that?

Mr. CABLE. I would like to know about that because it looks to me that no procedure is very effective if some interpreter fills out the answers and then hands the passport over to another room and the consul signs it.

Mr. HUDDLE. An American consul signs a visé and he assumes full responsibility for having signed it. He has, in a good many cases, seen the applicant, and he relies on the word of another commissioned officer whose duty it is to be with the applicant.

Mr. CABLE. The American consul signs it?

Mr. HUDDLE. Yes.

Mr. CABLE. Suppose these application blanks are filled out in the foreign language, would they be written in the American language, and would the American representative read the questions and

answers?

Mr. HUDDLE. The applications are filled out in the American language. The form is printed in two languages. The Form 228 in Poland is printed in English and the Polish languages. The answers are given by an applicant to a commissioned officer, an American commissioned officer, sometimes a medical clerk or interpreter, and written by either the officer or the clerk in the form, in the English language, and when a visé is secured the consular officer knows entirely the statements which the immigrant has made. He is familiar with the circumstances. He is careful about signing anything blindly.

Mr. CABLE. I know the State Department is that way, but does the American consul sign a passport in the presence of the alien?,

Mr. HUDDLE. No. The consul frequently reviews the application when the alien has gone, and the alien returns to get the visé.

Mr. RAKER. Mr. Carr, may I ask you this question, and you can probably answer it with the assistance of Mr. Doughten and Mr. Huddle: If a man comes to the consul with a passport, with his affidavit, asking for a visé, and if this law that is now under contemplation was enforced, that he present his affidavit or petition for an immigration certificate, and it is duly verified and laid before the consul-here is his affidavit with the application for a visé, with the application for an immigration certificate, with his number under the quota, and the documents are lying before the consular officer, and that affidavit shows he is disqualified to enter the United States on the ground that he is affected with a dangerous contagious disease, under the law as it stands, and the rules and regulations, would the consul issue a visé, or would he not only reject it, but refuse to issue a visé ?

Mr. CARR. Under the regulations as they now stand, the only ground on which he would refuse to issue a visé would be the ground of being politically undesirable, an anarchist, for example. Therefore, if no such ground were present in the application for certificate, he would have to issue the visé. Of course, it is inconceivable that that regulation should continue to exist after you pass legislation here in which you are going to give the consul the power and the responsibility of passing upon the right of the alien to come over on the basis of a wider list of conditions.

Mr. RAKER. Take the illustration I give: His passport is lying on the table, with the necessary affidavit you require, and his application in the consular office; you require under the provisions of this bill that he should state certain things, and in that statement for the immigration certificate it shows that he would not be admissible to the United States on the ground, as in the illustration, he is afflicted with a contagious disease. Now, under the regulations as they now stand, could not the consular officer refuse not only to issue the certificate of immigration but the visé ?

Mr. CARR. No; he could not under existing regulations. They could be changed, however.

Mr. RAKER. That settles that. Would you have any objection to inserting in the record the list of various employees that you have, a tabulated statement showing the aliens and citizens in the employ of our Government, as you attempted to read a while ago? Mr. CARR. I have no objection to doing that.

Mr. RAKER. Under the statement, where there are, say, 1,000 employees, you said about 500 were American citizens. Can you

tell the number of American citizens that were naturalized and those that were born in the United Statesé

Mr. CARR. I could by going over the list.

Mr. RAKER. Will you do that?

Mr. CARR. Yes; I will have that done.

Statement of the personnel of the American Consular Service, February 1, 1924, showing the citizenship of the several members of the service.

Mr. RAKER. It has been said, and I do not know if it is true or not, that over half of those that are in our service that are American citizens are naturalized?

Mr. CARR. You are speaking of the clerical force?

Mr. RAKER. Yes, sir; I am speaking of the clerical force.

Mr. CARR. That statement is not true. There are only some 55 clerks who are naturalized citizens, while of the consuls general and consuls there are only 15.

Mr. RAKER. I want the record to show. If you establish this independent force it would require the consular officer to take testimony outside of the record; would you be able to tell, by giving us an estimate even, of the additional amount of clerical work it would require, and the additional amount it would require to so enforce the law?

Mr. CARR. Basing that testimony on the form of certificate that you prescribe by this bill?

Mr. RAKER. No; basing it on the form of certificate that would permit and require the consular officer to take evidence outside the evidence of the application.

Mr. SWOOPE. To verify the certificate.

Mr. CARR. To verify the certificate. I can not tell you offhand. I will try and see if I can give you any figures on that. The only way you can determine how much the expenses would be would be to put the thing in operation.

Mr. RAKER. From your experience?

Mr. CARR. It depends upon the extent to which an officer would be expected to go. That would vary with every locality in the world, vary at every office.

Mr. RAKER. Even under the determination of the bill, where he can not go beyond the record of the application for the immigration certificate?

Mr. CARR. I would like to amplify the record and put it in.

Mr. RAKER. How much would it cost in clerical force, the number in clerical force, and the cost, if the consular officer acts upon the affidavit and that alone; secondly, how much would the force be, how many new employees, and what would be the additional expense if he were permitted to set up an independent force for the purpose of taking evidence outside the record?

Mr. CARR. If he is permitted to verify the statements in the application for certificate.

Mr. SABATH. You would have to have the approximate number of immigrants before you could do that.

Mr. CARR. I am assuming the number would be, as I think one of you gentlemen mentioned a while ago, approximately four or five hundred thousand.

The CHAIRMAN. The number who will apply is uncertain, of course. Mr. CARR. Yes, but the number who will be permitted to come in would be in the neighborhood of four or five hundred thousand. The CHAIRMAN. I believe we have reached a point where we can conveniently stop.

Mr. Box. He has not answered the question.

Mr. CARR. The last two questions I can not answer. It is impossible to answer those questions without a computation. I will try to have that done to the best of my ability and put it in my hearing, if you care to have it there.

Mr. RAKER. We will be very glad to have it, Mr. Carr.

One other question: That even the number allowed to any country by the quota could not by any means determine the amount of the force, the number of the force or the cost, because of the fact the officer would have a right to go into the record and the history of the parties outside the affidavit, and there might be 10,000 cases pending where only 1.000 would be permitted to come through the quota.

Mr. FREE. That does not occur.

Mr. RAKER. The first thousand might be turned down. Mr. CARR. It would depend upon the number of applicants. The CHAIRMAN. You can get an estimate from the numbers piled up in Italy.

Mr. CARR. Yes, sir.

Mr. SWOOPE. I think it would be inadvisable to do away with the vise so far as immigrants are concerned.

Mr. PORTER. Absolutely. You have got to use your vise as the anchor with that.

Mr. SWOOPE. I am quite in accord with that, but I wanted to make that clear.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be adjourned until to-morrow at 10 o'clock. Mr. Quinn, commander of the American Legion, desires to be heard, and he came partly at our request, and we will have to hear him.

(Thereupon at 12.20 o'clock p. m. the committee adjourned.)

(The following statement was subsequently submitted by Mr. Carr in response to the inquiries of Mr. Raker:)

Assuming that the number of immigrants under the bill as amended should approximate 169,000 annually on the basis of 2 per cent of the census of 1890, and assuming that the amount of work involved in the field in receiving and examining the lengthy application for an immigration certificate prescribed by the bill and filling out and delivering the certificate required by the bill should be approximately four times the work now involved in receiving an application for a visé