Lansing's address to Congress on Immigration Safety.

There are citizens of the United States born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. They have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government to question, to end innocent lives and commendable journeys on this Earth wherever they thought it might serve their vindictive agenda, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.

I urge you to enact this law at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than protect the lives of those faithful who profess due and undying allegiance to the Republic. I am asking that you uphold and safeguard the honor and self-respect of this nation. Such creatures of disloyalty and deadly Bolshevism that we have now met must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the democratic Government, they have sought to blow open public safety in order to serve interests alien to our own.

I urge you to end the indiscriminate flow of disloyalty through our borders into the Republic and to put a firm check on that which has already presented itself within.

I encourage and recommend...

...The adoption of federal criminal penalties that include fines or imprisonment for as long as twenty years and denial of all employment by the federal government for five years following a conviction for anyone who:

• with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or...organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof.

...That per the precedent laid in the Immigration Act of 1918, Congress allow for the deportation of any alien who at the time of entering the United States, or at any time thereafter was a member of or affiliated with a group advocating the violent overthrown of the government.

...To expand the grounds for deporting aliens to include weapons violations and abetting illegal immigration.

...That aliens applying for visas be required to register and be fingerprinted.

...That every other alien resident of the United States, who is fourteen years of age or older and remains in the United States for thirty days or longer, is to apply for registration and to be fingerprinted before the expiration of such thirty days. Registration would be under oath and include:

• the date and place of entry of the alien into the United States;
• activities in which he has been and intends to be engaged;
• the length of time he expects to remain in the United States;
• the criminal record, if any, of such alien;
• such additional matters as may be prescribed by the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, with the approval of the Attorney General.

...That guardians be mandated to register minors: they must register in person and be fingerprinted within 30 days of their fourteenth birthday.

...That post offices be designated as the location for registering and fingerprinting.

...That aliens are to notify the government if their residence changes and confirm their residence every three months, and penalties including fines and imprisonment be instated for failing to do so.