Immigration to America to Be Cut to Ten Percent, of Existing Quotas: Plan Submitted by U.S. State Se

The proposal to cut immigration to the United States for the next two years to ten percent of the existing quotas presented by the United States Secretary of State, Mr. Stimson, has been approved to-day by the Immigration Committee of the House of Representatives.

Jewish organisations in the United States, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Hias, as well as bodies like the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the Y.M.C.A., and the Immigrants’ Protective League have made representatives to Secretary Stimson against any immigration legislation that would “raise additional barriers to the admission and reunion of families of citizens or aliens already in the United States”. In a joint letter which these organisations have sent to Secretary Stimson they argue that to raise any additional barriers to the reunion of immigrant families would be inhuman and “against our self-interest as a nation”, since “the resident alien who has his family here has a greater stake in the country”.

The original Immigration Bill submitted to Congress at its reopening last month by Senator Reed, the Chairman of the Senate Immigration Committee, and Congressman Johnson, the Chairman of the Immigration Committee of the House of Representatives, proposed the complete stoppage of all immigration for two years as a means of combating the present unemployment in the country, admitting only near relatives of citizens or of aliens legally resident in the country.

Secretary Stimson declared himself opposed to the Reed and Johnson Bills, on the ground that they would alter the present immigration policy which is based on national origins, because the proportion of immigration from Northern and Western Europe over Southern and Eastern Europe would be materially changed, and he proposed instead the measure which has now been approved by the House Immigration Committee, reducing by 90 percent the number of aliens admitted under the present quota law.