The Argentine Government has ordered the establishment of a National Directorate for Migration to pass on the fitness of all would-be immigrants to this country. The decree establishing the Directorate states that this action is necessary because “the manpower of the country must be watched” ##o that “future generations may constitute an ethnically homogeneous entity.”
(Similar ###### providing for “ethnical” restrictions in immigration have been adopted recently by the governments of Brazil and Chile.)
Meanwhile, the Jewish community here has not been stirred much by an announcement by the pro-Peronist Organization Israelita Argentina that all applications for visas for Jewish Immigrants, even close blood relations of Argentine residents, must be cleared by the O.I.A. before being forwarded to the appropriate government agency. The announcement has been accepted as an official confirmation that there is discrimination, between Jews and non-Jews, since for the latter there is no extra procedure outside the regular government service for studying applications for visas.
Similarly, the Jews do not expect much from the 0.I.A.’s announcement that the new federal Constitution will contain an article that “Argentina does not recognize racial differences.” They still remember that during the recent election campaign the O.I.A. promised that the Constitution would declare racial persecution a high crime, on the sema level as treason. That promise has never been carried out.
A recent development which is causing a great deal of concern here is the latest practice of notaries in the Greater Buenos Aires area to enter the religion of all parties to real estate transactions within 25 kilometers of the coast, This strip has been declared a “security zone.” Since many Jews have purchased real estate in the Buenos Aires area in recent years, as a hedge against inflation, there is concern in the community over the government’s reasons for seeking this information. So official explanation has been made.
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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.
