Revision was demanded today by Attorney General James P. McGranery of a statute in the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act which might conceivably be used to bar Jews convicted on trumped up charges by Nazi courts.
Mr. McGranery testified before President Truman’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, which opened hearings here this morning, that “practical difficulties of enforcement result from this provision when it is realized that totalitarian countries consistently mask religious, racial and political persecutions as criminal prosecutions.” The Attorney General said he felt “there should be some clarification by statute of the nebulous middle ground between crimes and political offenses.”
Edward S.Maney, Chief of the State Department Visa Division, was scheduled to testify on visa regulations under the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act but he failed to appear. It was announced that Secretary of State Dean Acheson will appear on Wednesday in place of Mr. Maney to submit testimony on behalf of the Department.
Louis H. Bean, representing the Department of Agriculture, testified that “the immigration restrictions of the past 25 years, both legal and economic, have retarded the economic growth of this country.”
Secretary of Labor Maurice J. Tobin told the commission that national origins quotes system and other discriminatory aspects of the Act should be revised. “It is time that we discarded this concept-which never had any scientific or other logical basis, ” he said.
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.
