of intention should be filed in the consular offices.  When notice comes from the United States Department of Labor that so many laborers will be admitted from such and such district, the declarations are to be taken up in the order of their filing, and the proper number of persons certified for admission.  The apportionment of admissions from each country might be calculated on a basis of its population, also upon the nature of the employment offered, and upon the desirability of the alien himself, his general assimilability, his willingness to become naturalized, to adopt the English language and the American standard of living among efficient workers, etc.,—­all as proved by past experience with his countrymen.  This plan, in so far as it provides for a sliding scale of admissions, is in line with that proposed by Professor Gulick.  He advocates making all nations eligible for admission and citizenship, but would admit them only in proportion as they can be readily assimilated.  This would admit annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their American children.  The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already assimilated from that land.  But the difficulty of applying such a test lies in the complexity of the assimilative process.  No measure yet exists for assimilation.  Anthropologists are convinced that various strains in the populations, for example of France, or Great Britain, which have been dwelling together for centuries, are not by any means assimilated.  Mere naturalization is not a sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the expression of a desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for the promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have already indicated in the case of the Greeks.  Hence in working out the basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more practicable to consider first the question of economic utilization rather than assimilation.  This, of course, does not exclude from the Secretary of Labor’s judgment the category of assimilability as one of the factors in determining the apportionment of admissions.

It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration policy to purely national and economic considerations.  But it is, as matters now stand, a national question.  And it must remain so for some time to come, even if we are reproached with a narrow Mercantilist economics.  The admission of aliens is not yet a fundamental international right, or duty; it is only an example of comity within the family of nations.  And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop some institution or method of registering our sentiments of internationalism, and especially of determining international surplus.  As it is idle to talk or dream of abolishing poverty until at least the concept of social or national surplus is pretty clearly fixed and its realization either actually at hand or fairly imminent, just so is it vain to expect an international adjustment of the immigration problem on economic grounds until the existence of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the methods of apportioning it worked out.