Chairman Pat McCarran of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced a bill in the Senate late yesterday which would-establish a 507,-000 four-year ceiling for admission of DP’s and retain all provisions of the present law criticized as discriminatory. His bill was attacked today as “meaningless” by Senator Irving Ives of New York.
McCarran told the Senate that “the present law has been falsely criticized as being unjust and discriminatory.” He defended all provisions of the law which have been called discriminatory by Jewish organizations and attacked proposals to liberalize it, declaring that 39 percent of the DP’s admitted so far have been Jewish. The Catholic percentage, he stated, amounted to 44 percent.
The McCarran Bill would increase the number of DP’s brought in from 205,000 to 507,000 and permit the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to grant loans up to $5,000,000 to private or public agencies to transport DP’s to their final destinations in the U.S.
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