Administrative action by the State Department has reversed America’s traditional immigration policy and closed the country as an asylum for thousands of persecuted refugees from Hitlerism, it was revealed here today in a survey of the refugee situation.
Although the United States immigration quota law still stands on the books, the survey reveals that the entire quota system has been a dead letter since July 1 when regulations drastically altering the system of visa issuance and centralizing immigration control at Washington entered into effect.
In the first three months under the new regulations, the survey discloses, the total number of immigration visas issued to bona fide refugees on the entire European continent was approximately two hundred and fifty, plus several hundred renewed visas granted to immigrants whose original visas expired before they could be used while they waited for transportation in European ports. These visas were renewed by American consuls in Europe on specific instructions from Washington. This figure is in striking contrast to the normal immigration before the regulations entered into effect of between three and four thousand monthly.
When the new regulations were made public, Washington explained that they were not designed to reduce immigration but to establish a stricter control and more careful selection of those admitted to the country. In theory, after Washington passed on an applicant, the consul abroad was to issue the visa after examination of the prospective immigrant. In actual practice, however, the survey shows, thousands of applications are piling up in Washington and approvals trickle through to consulates in Europe in infinitesimal numbers.
NO VISAS ISSUED EVEN ON APPROVED APPLICATIONS
But not all approved applications result in visa grants, the survey shows. At several consulates, the officials, on receipt of word from Washington that there is “no objection” to the grant of the visa in the particular case, claim full discretion and require documents, evidence of support and compliance with widely differing conditions in accordance with the consuls’ own personal interpretations of the immigration laws.
In Switzerland, for instance, one consulate demands production of “family books” from German refugees. These are the record of the family’s vital statistics, and a refugee from Germany, particularly a Jewish refugee, has no means whatever of obtaining the document from the Reich. Consequently, he is denied a visa though the Departments of State, War, Navy, Labor and Justice have “no objection” to his admission into the United States.
When the new regulations came into effect, several hundred refugees who had been “accorded” visas but had not actually received them, had to start their applications all over. No action has yet been taken in their cases. Some of them, in Portugal, who were admitted on transit visas to obtain their U.S. visas here, are now in forced residence after being imprisoned for failure to leave the country. Others are interned in Spain and Switzerland. Several thousand men, women and children, who can qualify for immigration visas under the new regulations, are in concentration camps in unoccupied France, undergoing inconceivable hardships waiting for their applications to go through the Washington mill. The State Department’s present system not only closes the United States to refugee immigration, but also greatly increases the difficulties involved in emigration to South and Central America and Canada, since the refugees cannot obtain United States transit visas, the survey establishes.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
