The present immigration law, which provides admission of aliens according to national origin, was described last night as “the first American Nuremberg law” by Harry N. Rosenfield, Displaced Persons Commissioner, addressing a conference of the Women’s American ORT. “No more un-American law is in our statute books today,” he told the parley here.
Commissioner Rosenfield said that the “Iron Curtain” established by the present immigration quota based on national origins “is a living lie” because it claims to admit 150,000 a year, but in the last 20 years only one-quarter of that number were admitted on the average. He called for new legislation “to abolish the abolish the evil effects of the national origins and quota law.
A bitter battle over immigration legislation is about to start in Congress. The Senate has pending a bill, approved by its Judiciary Committee last year, to revise and codify the present immigration laws. Sponsored by the committee chairman, Senator Pat McCarran, it would remove racial barriers in the present laws but would tighten the provisions for admission and deportation on “security” grounds. A group of Senators, led by Hubert H. Hamphrey of Minnesota and Herbert H. Lehman of New York, plans a floor fight to “liberalize” the McCarran Bill.
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.
