"1. The importation of contract laborers, usually under the direction of padrones, from Greece, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.
"2. The smuggling of immigrants across the Canadian and Mexican borders who would be certain of rejection at our Atlantic ports.
"3. The 'patching up' of immigrants afflicted with favus, trachoma, and other loathsome or contagious diseases so that they can get past the inspectors without detection, even though the process is likely to augment their sufferings later.
"4. The forgery and sale of spurious naturalization certificates and the repeated use of the same certificates passed back and forth between relatives and friends.
"5. The assisting of immigration, either by local authorities in Europe or by earlier comers in America.
"6. The stimulating of immigration by transportation companies and their armies of paid agents and sub-agents in Europe."
As a result, Mr. Ogg says, of the widespread operations through these underground channels there is an abnormal immigration movement so vast as "to override and all but reduce to a mere joke our whole restrictive system. That an appalling number of aliens who are on the verge of dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency do somehow contrive to get into the country every year is a fact too well known to call for verification here. Nobody undertakes to deny it." There is plain necessity, therefore, that some means of redeeming the situation should be found.
The Commissioner-General of Immigration, in his report for 1905, devotes much space to new or amendatory legislation, which he regards as a necessity.[33] To bring the steamship companies to stricter regard for law, he would raise the penalty for carrying diseased persons from $100 to $500. He favors the debarring of illiterates, and as a special recommendation proposes an international conference of immigration experts, with a view to secure by treaty or convention the coöperation of foreign countries from which aliens migrate hither, both in reducing the number of immigrants and preventing the inadmissible and undesirable classes from leaving their own homes.
[Sidenote: Value of International Conference]
Such a conference would certainly be conducive to a good understanding between nations, would doubtless secure an effective restraint of the transportation agencies, and throw such light upon the attitude of foreign governments toward our present system of immigration restriction as would enable Congress to decide intelligently what additional measures are necessary to protect this country from the dangers of an increasing influx of aliens. This is an admirable recommendation. As Mr. Whelpley says, it is a question of emigration as well as immigration, and since two countries are interested in the migrants, the whole matter is properly one for international conference and action.