In connection with Colonel Lindbergh's departure to England reactionary elements in the United States again have raised their voices against foreigners. The new campaign is carried on with the insistent demand that a passport system applicable only to aliens should be introduced in the United States--a system that exists only in despotic European countries.

Although the crusade began only with the demand for registration of foreigners, it now actually is directed against the entire population of the United States, since none of the residents of the country bears on his forehead any mark distinguishing him as a citizen from an alien. Consequently the passport system will have to be extended to everybody, and the number of policemen checking up the documents will have to be increased threefold.

Undoubtedly the Congress will be presented with a set of proposals; some of 2them will be enacted as laws, and the authorities will have to enforce measures directed in their main features against foreigners. Against these encroachments of American reactionaries attempting to strangle the freedom of American citizens all should protest in the most energetic way. Last June Mr. Dies, a Congressman from Texas, tried to institute a campaign against foreigners,asserting that in the United States there are more than seventeen million aliens, of whom more than six million have entered the country illegally, and seven million have not sworn allegiance to the United States. He insisted upon the deportation of all those illegally residing in this country and on allowing one year's time for the voluntary departure of the four million immigrants who arrived here legally but have not become citizens. He demanded also the total stoppage of immigration.

The figures given by Mr. Dies are vastly exaggerated. They are absolutely inaccurate. Thus, according to the 1930 census, fourteen million foreign-born persons resided in the United States. Out of this number eight million had accepted American citizenship, and there were only six million aliens.

According to the Federal Commission on Immigration and Naturalization the number of aliens since 1930 either on account of naturalization or departure from the country has decreased to 4.9 millions, of whom more than a million (1.1) since then have taken out first papers. Thus there are only three and a half million foreigners in this country who have not taken any steps to become citizens. From this one can see how wide Mr. Dies is of the mark.

Quite inaccurate also is Mr. Dies's assertion relative to the number of those illegally residing here and subject to deportation.

According to the data furnished by Commissioner of Immigration McCormack the number of those subject to deportation does not exceed 100,000 persons. The same number of persons illegally residing here was cited by the former secretary of labor, Mr. Doak, and by the former assistant to the Commissioner of Immigration, Mr. I. Wilson, who for twenty-seven years studied the problems of immigration. The figure mentioned does not include those who came illegally prior to July 1, 1924, and according to the law such persons are not subject 4to deportation. The number of them is not definitely known, but it cannot exceed 400,000.

As is well known, to persons who entered the country prior to June 3 the right is accorded to legalize their residence here. In the period of 1930-1935 more than 45,000 foreigners legalized their residence, and seventy-eight per cent of the registrations took place in the first three years of the period. In the three years following the number of legalizations fell off rapidly, and the majority of them, it appears, must have availed themselves of the opportunity to acquire a legal status. Unfounded also are the assertions that in the last thirteen years almost 500,000 sailors from commercial vessels have left their ships and are now illegally residing in this country, and that in the recent years 250,000 sailors annually have been escaping from their steamers and remaining here. As a matter of fact the exact data show that only 164,800 sailors have deserted their vessels in the last thirteen years, and that since then many of them have left the United States. During the rush of desertions not 250,000 but only 21,000 sailors left their vessels annually and during the 5last four years only 1,500 desertions on the average have taken place annually. There are not a million sailors on all the vessels that arrive at American ports in a year; only 250,000 foreign sailors arrived in our ports in the year 1934, and out of that number only 250 men remained ashore.

As additional evidence we cite the words of Mr. McCormack, the Federal Commissioner of Immigration, who at the hearings in the joint session of the House and the Senate expressed himself as follows:

"At present we witness in this country anti-immigrant prejudices directly or indirectly pointed toward a third of our population, for out of every three residents of our fair land one is either foreign born or derived of foreign parentage. I am certain that [the effects of] those prejudices can be seen by every fair-minded person in the attempts to picture foreigners as people dangerous to our form of government, to our standard of living, and to the positions which we occupy at our work. However, all the accusations against foreigners remain to be proved.

"We have reason to suspect the source which spreads among the members of Congress and the press unfounded and false information concerning the foreign population in our country. The information and the data submitted by this source is absolutely unfounded and not substantiated by facts. More than that, the stories put out by this source are in contradiction to the official census data and the official information made public by the Immigration Bureau and the Department of Labor in Washington."

In connection with the outcries raised against immigrants, in which statements are heard that all immigrants are criminals, Senator Norris declared that making the laws more stringent for the purpose of reducing crime is not sufficient. It is imperative for that purpose that the American people should radically change their ways of life, and then such hideous crimes as the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby would not occur.

With this statement of Senator Norris's nobody can disagree. According to the data furnished by the National Council in Washington criminalism costs the 7nation annually not less than thirteen billion dollars. The official data supplied by the Department of Justice in Washington show that that Department in the year 1934 had 5,824,448 names registered of criminals and held in its files the fingerprints of nearly six million persons. In the same year about 350,000 arrests were made. Out of this number 7,000 persons arrested had previous criminal records, and 120,000 persons had had their fingerprints taken before.

Out of the 350,000 persons arrested in the year 1934, 7,000 criminals were charged with murder, 15,000 with holdups, 30,000 with grand larceny, 50,000 with stealing, and 10,000 with embezzlement, fraud, etc. Among these 20,000 were women, 80,000 were negroes, and the rest were white males; the average age of the male criminals was nineteen years, and of the females twenty-three years.

According to the data recently released by the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation and by the head of that bureau, Mr. E. Hoover, in the year 1935 8criminal activity in the country somewhat subsided, and yet on the average there were daily 3.8 premeditated killings, 2.4 homicides, 4.3 criminal assaults on women, the same number of kidnappings, 27.8 assaults with the purpose of robbery, 41.5 robberies, the same number of larceny cases, 163.3 automobile thefts, 208 cases of larceny, and 465 cases of all other serious forms of crime.

The data furnished by the Department of Justice and by the chief of the federal police present a vivid picture, the explanation to which is supplied by Mr. James Moss, the head of the National Council in Washington, who asserts that "the average citizen is not at all familiar with the state of affairs in the country and the conditions as they exist".

To this problem the attention of the nation should be drawn, and the immigrants should be let alone, for they have nothing to do with bringing about the conditions complained of.