The Adopted Citizen Part 2

In two particulars of vital conscience this bill embodies a radical departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this country...It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum which have always been open...and it excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied, without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural capacity.

Restrictions like these, adopted earlier in our history as a Nation, would very materially have altered the course and cooled the humane ardor of our politics. The right of political asylum has brought to this country many a man of noble character and elevated purpose who was marked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land...

The literacy test and the tests and restrictions which accompany it constitute an even more radical change in the policy of our Nation. Hitherto we have generously kept our doors open to all who were not unfitted by reason of disease or incapacity for self-support...In this bill it is proposed to turn away from tests of character and of quality and impose tests which exclude and restrict; for the new tests here embodied are not tests of quality or of character or of personal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one of the chief of the opportunities they seek, the opportunity of education.

If the people of this country have made up their minds to limit the number of immigrants by arbitrary tests and so reverse the policy of all the generations of Americans that have gone before them, it is their right to do so. I am their servant and have no license to stand in their way. But I do not believe that they have...Does this bill rest upon the conscious and universal assent and desire of the American people? I doubt it.

--Wilson’s response to a Congressional bill requiring literacy tests of immigrants. He vetoed the bill January 28, 1915.