File No. 8195/4–5.

The Acting Secretary of State to the Belgian Chargé.

No. 461.]

Sir: The department duly received your note of August 22a last, inquiring whether or not certain inducements being offered in Belgium by Mr. Charles Schuler, immigration agent of the State of Louisiana, are contrary to the spirit and intent of the immigration laws of the United States.

A reply to your note has been withheld awaiting an opinion from the Attorney-General on a pertinent case, pending at New Orleans, of an emigrant applying for admission in pursuance of a contract of the character described in the pamphlets which you inclosed.

I have now the honor to inclose herewith a copy of the opinion rendered in the case by the Attorney-General, by which you will see that for reasons stated therein the alien was held to be not entitled to admission into the United States.

Accept, etc.,

Alvey A. Adee.
[Page 72]
[Inclosure.]

The Secretary of Commerce and Labor to the Secretary of State.

51591/3.

Sir: Referring to your letter of August 28a last (No. 8195/2), the receipt of which was acknowledged by this department on August 31,a I have the honor to inclose herewith a copy of an opinion handed down on September 30 by the Attorney-General in the case of the alien, Geronimo Garcia, which was brought by the Louisiana state board of agriculture and immigration with the object of testing the provisions of the immigration act of February 20, 1907, relating to the importation of alien laborers by States and Territories.

This opinion seems to furnish a reply to the inquiry of the charge d’affaires ad interim of Belgium with regard to whether certain inducements being offered in Belgium by Mr. Charles Schuler, immigration agent of the State of Louisiana, are contrary to the spirit and intent of the immigration laws of this country.

I have, etc.,

Oscar S. Straus.
[Subinclosure.]

The Attorney-General to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th instant in reference to the appeal of Geronimo Garcia, who has been excluded from the United States by a decision of the board of special inquiry at the port of New Orleans, in a test case brought by the Louisiana state board of agriculture and immigration, in which you recite the facts brought out by the testimony and request an expression of my opinion as to whether the admission of an alien to the United States under the circumstances thus recited would be in violation of the immigration act of February 20, 1907.

The facts as stated by you are as follows:

Geronimo Garcia arrived at the port of New Orleans from Cuba-on August 5, 1907. His passage was paid by Mr. Reginald Dykers, who at the time was the regularly authorized agent of the Louisiana state board of agriculture and immigration, out of funds appropriated in regular manner by the state legislature. Mr. Dykers and a Mr. L. H. Allen, the latter also being a representative of the said board, approached the alien in Habana and solicited him to immigrate to the State of Louisiana, assuring him that employment as a farm laborer would be secured for him on his arrival in said State. In exchange for the passage money the alien gave to the said officials a receipt, in which he promised to return to the Louisiana state board of agriculture and immigration with a year the sum so advanced. It is the expectation of the state agent that in such cases, upon the alien’s securing employment, his employer will loan him the amount necessary to reimburse that State and deduct the same from his wages; but no method has been provided whereby an employer can be compelled to make such loan, it being the intention of the state board to rely upon the moral obligation of the alien’s promise to reimburse the State and not upon any legal measures against him or his employer. The alien is left free to select such employer as he pleases, although the expectation of the agent is that aliens selected by him under this plan will be of such a reliable class that they will usually seek employment from parties who can be depended upon to advance to the alien the amount of the passage and enable him to therewith reimburse the state fund. It also appears that, while the alien Garcia had seen advertisements published abroad by the Louisiana state board of agriculture and immigration, reciting the inducements the State of Louisiana offers for immigration thereto, he was not induced to come to the United States solely by reason of such inducements; nor was the sole inducement the fact that his [Page 73] passage was paid by another, nor the fact, brought out in the testimony, that his father had previously come to this country. These facts operated to some extent, however, to lead him to endeavor to avail himself of the assurances given by the above-named agents that employment as a farm laborer would be secured for him on his landing in Louisiana.

Although the desire of the state agent is that Garcia, if landed, shall enter the employ of an individual planter who would be willing to loan him the cost of his passage and gradually deduct it from his wages, thus enabling said alien to immediately reimburse the state fund, he is, as above stated, left free to accept other employment if he so desires; and there is no evidence that shows positively that the said Garcia (or any other alien imported in accordance with the plan) might not, after landing, be employed by a corporation, association, or society, as freely and in the same manner as by an individual; suggesting a possibility that, under the indirect method of attempting to eventually secure reimbursement to the state fund of the amount of the alien’s passage, a condition could arise which might, perhaps, be regarded as being, remotely but yet in effect, a payment of such passage by a corporation, society, or association.

Upon these facts I am of the opinion that Garcia is not entitled to admission into the United States.

1. It appears from this statement that representatives of the Louisiana state board approached Garcia in Habana and solicited him to immigrate to Louisiana, assuring him that employment as a farm laborer would be secured for him on his arrival, and that such assurances operated as a material, if not the principal, inducement to his immigration, since neither the advertisements published by the State, nor the payment of his passage, nor his father’s previous coming, was the sole inducement to his coming, but these matters operated to some extent to lead him to endeavor to avail himself of the assurances of employment given him by the representatives of the state board.

Among the classes of aliens excluded by section 2 of the act of 1907 (34 Stat., 898) are “persons hereinafter called contract laborers, who have been induced or solicited to migrate to this country by offers or promises of employment, or in consequence of agreements, oral, written, or printed, expressed or implied, to perform labor in this country of any kind, skilled or unskilled.” This provision, as stated in my opinion, rendered the President on March 20, 1907, excludes “aliens solicited or induced to immigrate by reason of offers or promises, even when there is no contract of employment.” (26 Opin., 199, 207.)

The assurances given to Garcia by the state agents constitute, in my opinion, promises of employment within the inhibition of the statute. While it is provided that aliens coming to this conutry in consequence of advertisements by a State of its inducements to immigration shall not be treated as coming under a promise of employment (sec. 6), there is no exception in favor of a State in reference to specific promises of employment to individual immigrants, such as were held out to Garcia by the representatives of the state board. Neither is there any requirement in the act that the promises of employment, in order to work exclusion, must be the sole inducement to the immigration.

Therefore, since, as stated in my opinion rendered the President on March 6, 1907, the unquestionable right of Congress to regulate the admission of aliens into the United States clearly controls the action of any state agent in this respect (26 Opin., 180, 193), it follows that on account of the assurances of employment that were given to Garcia as an inducement to his immigration, he should be excluded from admission.

2. Furthermore, as his passage was paid out of state funds, unless it was also clearly shown that he did not belong to any of the classes, such as paupers, etc., specifically excluded by the act, he comes within the provision of section 2 of the act (34 Stat., 898) excluding any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is affirmatively and satisfactorily shown that such person does not belong to one of the foregoing excluded classes, and that said ticket or passage was not paid for by any corporation, association, society, municipality, or foreign government, either directly or indirectly.” Under this provision, while the payment of an immigrant’s passage out of state funds does not of itself require his exclusion, yet such payment by a State, just as by an individual, operates to throw upon the immigrant the burden of clearly showing that he does not come within any of the otherwise excluded classes, and, in case of his failure to so show, he is not entitled to admission.

3. In reference to your suggestion that under the indirect method of attempting to eventually secure reimbursement to the state fund of the amount of the [Page 74] alien’s passage a condition might arise which could perhaps be regarded as in effect a payment of his passage by a corporation, society, or association, as the statement of facts does not show that any such condition actually exists, or that his passage money is, in fact, to be repaid, I am of the opinion, without passing upon the question as to what would be the effect of such a condition if it did arise, that the mere hypothetical possibility of such a condition would not be a ground of exclusion.

Respectfully,

Charles J. Bonaparte.
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