AMERICA AND ALIENS.

Evening Post, Volume LXVVII, Issue 36, 12 February 1909, Page 7

AMERICA AND ALIENS.

«. BILL INTRODUCED IN NEW YORK ASSEMBLY. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright NEW YORK, 11th February. A Bill has been introduced into the New York State Assembly at Albany to deal with the Asiatic immigration problem. In it a proposal is made to appoint a Legislative Commission 10 confer with representatives of other States, and, if thought advisable, to recommend Congress to pass a general Exclusion Act applicable to the Japanese. CALIFORNIAN BILL REJECTED. NEW YORK, 11th February. The Californian State Assembly, by 41 votes to 37, rejected the Bill which proposed to enforce the segregation of Japanese from other school children. Anti- Asiatic Bills were also rejected by the Oregon and Nevada Senates. Telegraphing to Mr. J. N. Gillett, Governor of California, on the sth inst., Mr. Roosevelt, referring to the Bill providing for the segregation of Japanese from white school children, stated :—: — "This is the most offensive Bill of all. It is clearly unconstitutional, and we should be compelled to test it." In December last a Washington message stated :—": — " All Japanese emigration to the United States is to be stopped by the Japanese Government. When the Japanese Diet meet a few weeks hance, Baron Komura, Minister of Foreign Affairs, will make official announcement that the Government has decided to prohibit all emigration to the United States after a given date. Thus will disappear the last remaining difference of possible cause of trouble between the United States and Japan. Though the announcement in Tokio may be made upon the assumption that the Japanese Government has voluntarily agreed , upon this course, as a matter of fact the decision was reached through a long series of negotiations between Secretary Root and Baron Takahira, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States. The order of the Japanese Government will prohibit all emigration, but will, of course, leave travel free, so that merchants, students, and tourists from Japan may visit America at will under the ; -passport agreement with the United States Government. In settling the immigration matter it is understood there is no treaty, nor even tin exchange of formal notes, but that, none the less, the so-called ' yellow peril ' is a ghost laid to rest." Speaking in the Japanese Diet on 3rd February, Baron Komura said that Japan was relying on the sense of justice of Americans regarding anti-Japanese legislation. Japanese should, he declared, concentrate in the Far East, and the dovoi'nmenb was enforcing the restriction of emigration, to the United States,.