Jewish Groups Issue Statement Castigating Immigration Law

The National Community Relations Advisory Council released today a statement of principles on American immigration and naturalization policies, castigating the McCarran-Walter Immigration Law.

The statement, subscribed to by all the constituent agencies of the NCRAC–which include the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, United Synagogue of America and 33 Jewish community councils and community relations councils throughout the United States–denounced especially the national origins quota system.

The NCRAC memorandum of principles assailed the “bigotry and ignorance” regarding racial and ethnic qualities stipulated by the Immigration Law. “It is paradoxical,” the statement observed, “that America, which prides itself on its loyalty to the dictates of scientific knowledge and discovery, should continue to base so significant a portion of its legal and legislative structure on foundations thoroughly and irrevocably exploded by scientific findings.”

The statement scored the “inhumane and medieval” use of deportation as a punishment for aliens and the unjustifiable distinctions that the law makes between native and naturalized citizens in the prescription of penalties for specified acts. Copies of the statement have been sent this weekend President Eisenhower and to all members of Congress. The NCRAC has commended the President on the occasion of his State of the Union message to the Congress, for his references in that message to the need for changes in the discriminatory and inequitable features of the McCarran-Walter Law.

Bernard H. Trager of Bridgeport, Conn., NCRAC chairman, asserted that “the only real way out of the scandalous impasse into which our immigration procedures have fallen, is through a thorough and fundamental overhauling of our basic immigration and nationality policies, to bring them into conformity with the national needs of the United States and with our traditions of humaneness, justice and fair play.”

The breakdown of the refugee relief act was predictable, Mr. Trager said. He recalled that the Jewish organizations comprising the NCRAC questioned the wisdom of the legislation when it was introduced “not because of any lack of concern on their part for the tragic plight of the refugees, but because they felt that the proposed legislation would not accomplish the purpose for which it was ostensibly designed, and because they felt that debate over the measure would derail public attention and the interest of legislators from the really necessary problem of basic revision of our immigration statutes.”

The constituent organizations of the NCRAC would continue, Mr. Trager said, in collaboration with other like-minded organizations, to seek to bring about the fullest possible public appreciation of the need for basic revision of American immigration and naturalization policies.