Major Jewish Organizations Ask Changes in Administration’s New Dp Immigration Bill

Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and chairman Emanuel Celler of the House Judiciary Committee, were today urged by major national and local Jewish organizations to make three specific changes in the bill to amend the Displaced Persons Act, recently reported cut by the House Judiciary Committee.

The request was made in letters sent in behalf of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans of the U.S., Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and 27 community councils in all parts of the country. Among the changes urged by the Jewish organizations were:

1. Elimination of any mortgaging of future quotas. At present H.R. 4567 would charge DP visas against future quotas up to 25 percent of such quotas during the next five year and up to 50 percent during subsequent years; 2. That the langrage of the so-called Volksdeutche provision, which allocates 50 percent of the regular German quota “exclusively to persons of German ethnic origin” be changed to remove the racist connotations of the words “German ethnic origin.” It is not pro-posed to deprive the Volksdeutche of any relief, but to remove from the law a principle of racial selection which the Jewish organizations call repugnant to the American tradition; 3. That the benefits of the act should not be extended to any special group not defined in the Act as comprising displaced persons.