Hadassah and the American Jewish Congress today each urged the liberalization of the existing immigration laws. In a resolution adopted at the concluding session of its four-day convention, held here, the 200 delegates at the Hadassah parley called upon Congress to enact immigration legislation that would include “permanent provisions for the allocation of quotas for refugees.”
Under the McCarran-Walter Act, the resolution declared, “the needs of refugees are not met, thereby necessitating special legislation to meet each emergency as it arises.” The delegates also urged Congress to “eliminate the discriminatory practices of the National Origins Quota System” of the McCarran-Walter Act, which “places discriminatory limitations on immigration from many countries.”
In a letter to the White House, Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, urged the administration to go beyond immigration legislation limited to the pooling or redistribution of unused quota numbers. He said the proposal to distribute unused quotas “fails to go to the heart of the issue–the racist and discriminatory national origins quota system, which has determined the issuance of immigration visas since 1924.”
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.
