Canada Asked to Admit Jewish Deportees

Jewish leaders in Montreal have agreed to lodge an Appeal, with the Canadian Government for the temporary admission of several hundred Jewish immigrants ordered deported from the United States because they came in excess of the Russian quota.

Word was received at the office of the American Jewish Congress requesting representatives be sent there to accompany Jewish representatives of Canada who are proceeding to Ottawa to urge the admission of the deportees. The message from Canada is signed by Dionel Cohen, representing the United Jewish organizations of Montreal, according to an announcement made by Bernard G. Richards, Secretary of the American Jewish Congress.

Following Mr. Louis Marshall’s visit to President Coolidge and the Jewish Congress delegation’s appeal to the Secretary of Labor, the Department of Labor Saturday issued a statement that the appeal sent to the President in behalf of the excess quota immigrants had been referred to the Department and that “Every case will be individually reviewed and endeavor made to grant relief in cases where extreme hardship is apparent insofar as it is possible to do so within the limitations of the immigrant law”.

The same day 142 immigrants were placed on board the white Star liner Majestic and deported. The pier was crowded with relatives and friends who were prevented from taking leave of the deportees, whose only “crime” was being above the Russian quota. Six of the deportees were saved by a writ of habeas corpus signed by Judge Augustus Hand in the Federal Court.

Governor Smith, in a forceful address Sunday morning before the Society for Ethical Culture attacked the immigration restriction. He said: “Finally, I would protest against our immigration restrictions. A sorry nation we would be now had we adopted our exclusions fifty years age. Education is highly desirable, but if a man can’t get it, it is not the greatest thing. My idea of what makes a good citizen would let in a lot of fine, capable stock that can’t write its own name. Our prisons are full of men who can write their own names – and some one’s else, for that matter. The only way to correct evil is to recognize it, then if we are men we must abolish it”.

Reports from Washington today told of a vigorous protest filed with President Coolidge against basing the immigration quotas for the fiscal year on the census of 1890 as proposed by Chairman Johnson of the House Immigration Committee. The protest is signed by six prominent citizens of Cleveland who attack the heads of the Department of Labor for the attempts” to place a brand of undesirability upon the race stock of Americans who are not of British or Teutonic origin”.

The President’s attention id drawn particularly to Secretary Davis’ book as indicative of the attitude of a mind which qualifies immigrants of non-British or non-Teutonic origin as undesirables.

In the face of the deportations of hundreds of humble immigrants, Prince Youssoupoff, self-confessed slayer of Rasputin, his wife and Baroness Wrangel were admitted Friday as “diplomatic representatives” of a nation that does not exist. Prince Youssoupoff’s passport was signed during the regency of the late Czar, and the three who have come to prepare the way for the coming later of other impoverished monarchists were admitted regardless of the exhausted Russian quota.