TEDDY ROOSEVELT ON IMMIGRANTS

Teddy Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and the youngest to ever occupy the Oval Office.  He was Vice President to President William McKinley when in 1901 McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt took over at age 42.  (At age 43 President John F. Kennedy was the youngest to ever be elected President.)

Then former president, Theodore Roosevelt wrote the letter below on January 3^, 1919 to the president of the American Defense Society. It was read publicly at a meeting on January 5, 1919.  Roosevelt died the next day, on January 6, 1919. 

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   “We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin.

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But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”