150.071Control/14
The Netherlands Legation to the Department of State
The attention of the Royal Netherland Legation has been drawn on a Bill, which, if passed, will be called, “Alien Seamen Act of [Page 843] 1926”, and is mentioned on page 347 of the Congressional Record of December 9, 1927.37 It is reintroduced into the Senate and referred to the Committee on Immigration.
Two clauses of this Bill will create, if enforced as introduced, serious difficulties for several steamship Companies of the Netherlands.
The first is the provision prohibiting any ship from entering an American port, if among her crew are aliens, who would not be admissible to the United States under the Immigration Laws (Section 7). A great number of Netherland ships, especially those of the Pacific Lines, have in their crew Javanese and Chinese, both being most times Netherland subjects. If the bill should come into force, the strange fact would occur, that a ship, carrying the Netherland flag, would not be allowed to have certain subjects of her own country in her crew when entering a port of the United States.
The second clause is to the effect that clearance will be refused to any ship whose crew, as far as engaged and taken at foreign ports, shall, when departing from the United States, be smaller than at the arrival of the vessel. It is obvious, that this provision in many cases will cause a long delay and considerable pecuniary loss to Netherlands vessels and it seems hardly fair to force the latter to take on board a number of undesirable aliens simply in order to bring the crew up to its full number.
The Netherland Government considers that this Bill, if passed, will be most detrimental to the shipping interests of the Kingdom and will constitute a strong impediment to the development of the economic relations between the United States and Holland.
The Royal Government would therefore highly appreciate if the United States Government and Congress, when the bill is under discussion, would give due consideration to the very important interests of Netherlands navigation, endangered thereby.
- Daily issue; bound issue, vol. 69, pt. 1, p. 341.↩