Page 30 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

24 THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
(Explanatory Note.—The Smith bill was adopted just prior to World War II as a necessary defense precaution and provided for the registration and finger- printing of aliens.)
COMMUNIST PARTY, U. 8. A.
The Smith Bill—one of the most re- pressive of a long list of "antialien" measures now hanging fire in Con- gress—may come up any day. * * *
This is an omnibus bill, combining all the vicious features of a number of measures, and a few of its own. It re- quires registration and fingerprinting of all aliens, a domestic passport system which, unquestionably would involve the whole population. At the same time, it makes it more difficult for the foreign-born to become citizens * * * {Daily Worker, May 29, 1939, p. 6).
* * * The tory members of the Senate Committee on Immigration ap- proved a bill that violates the very fundamentals of the Declaration of In- dependence and of American democ- racy.
* * * In providing for the regis- tration of all aliens, the measure strikes a direct blow at the Bill of Rights. Let no one try pretend that such a measure is aimed at aliens alone. Its real pur- pose is to intimidate aliens and foreign- born citizens in order to weaken the unions and other democratic organiza- tions to which they belong. This is not an "antialien" bill. It is a sedition bill to undermine democracy. The measure is an opening wedge against the rights and liberties of all Americans
{Sunday Worker, July 2, 1939, p. 6). Fifth column hysteria swept both houses of Congress today and included in its destructive sweep the civil liberties of the American people and the rights of organized labor as well as the welfare
of the foreign born. DirectconsequencesofthePresident's
national defense program included:
(1) Passage of the LaFoUette oppres- sive Labor Practices Act. * * *
(2) Unanimous approval by the Sen- ate Judiciary Committee of the Smith Omnibus Anti-Alien Bill. * * *
(3) Approval by the House of the President's reorganization plan trans- ferring the Bureau of Immigration from the Department of Labor to the Depart- ment of Justice, thus subjecting the foreign born to persecution by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI * * * {Daily Worker, May 28, 1940, p, 1).
NATIONAL LAWYEB8 GUILD
At its 1940 convention the Guild op-
posed all proposals to fingerprint or require identification cards of aliens inasmuch as such proposals were deemed discriminatory and necessarily "lead to the registration and fingerprinting of the entire population." {National Law- yers Guild Quarterly, vol. 3, No. 2, p. 119, July 1940.)
Guild opposed H. R. 5138, the Alien Registration Act, pointing out that the act not only provided for the registra- tion of aliens but contained a Federal Sedition law and a military disafi"ection law which it criticized as a violation of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution {Lawyers Guild Review, October 1940, p. 591).
TheNationalLawyersGuild * * * disapproves all proposals, whether fed- eral, state, or local, to register finger- print or require identification cards of all aliens, as such proposals are dis- criminating and must of necessity also lead to the registration and finger- printing of the entire population; * * * The impending transfer of the Immi- gration and Naturalization Service from the Labor Department to the Depart- ment of Justice; * * * {National Lawyers Guild Quarterly, vol. 3, No. 2, July 1940, p. 119).