File No. 907/33–34.
I have communicated the substance of the decision of Mr. Bonaparte to the
Belgian foreign office in a note, copy of which is inclosed.
[Inclosure.]
Minister Wilson
to the Minister for Foreign
Affairs.
American Legation,
Brussels, November 7,
1907.
Mr. Minister: Referring to your
excellency’s note of the 3d of May, 1907 (Direction E, No. 1370), I
beg to say that I am just in receipt of a dispatch from my
Government, inclosing a copy of a decision rendered by the
Attorney-General of the United States in the case of one Geronimo
Garcia, a native of Cuba, who was induced to immigrate to the State
of Louisiana by agents of the state board of agriculture, under
promise of definite employment after arrival, his expenses thither
being paid under agreement of reimbursement from his wages.
The Attorney-General, in summing up his conclusions, held that the
promise of specific employment made in the case of Garcia was a
clear violation of the labor-contract law, which excludes “persons
hereinafter called ‘contract laborers,’ who have been induced or
solicited to migrate to this country by offers or promise of
employment, or in consequence of agreements, oral, written, or
printed, expressed of implied, to perform labor in this country of
any kind, skilled or unskilled.”
This provision, the Attorney-General holds, excludes “aliens
solicited or induced to immigrate by reason of offers or promises,
even when there is no contract of employment.
Your excellency will note that the inhibition here quoted is express
and clear, but in order that the exact status of the present
interpretation of the law may be clearly understood, it may not be
superfluous to advise you that the decision of the Attorney-General
in no way affects the rights of constituent States of the Union,
through their accredited agents, to solicit immigration by
advertisement, a right denied to corporations or individuals, and to
pay the passage of immigrants, a right denied to corporations,
societies, or municipalities. There is no bar to the expenditure by
the State of any sum it chooses to appropriate for assisting
immigration. A State may charter a steamship or steamship lines, and
through its agents bring in aliens at its own expense. It can give
land and cattle or property of any kind to immigrants brought in in
this way, after their arrival. It is merely forbidden to bring in
alien laborers under any prior promise of compensation or
employment, or under any form of labor contract.
An alien induced to immigrate to the United States by the agents of
any constituent State, and whose passage is paid, or who, after his
or her arrival, is endowed with land or other property by the State,
can not be deported under the contract-labor law. An alien induced
to immigrate to the United States by the agents of any constituent
State under promise of specific employment may be deported.
Your excellency is doubtless well advised of the existence of other
provisions of the immigration laws of the United States relative to
the deportation of undesirable immigrants, such as paupers,
criminals, anarchists, persons afflicted with loathsome contagious
or incurable diseases, and women brought for immoral purposes.
I avail myself, etc.,
