Establishment of a Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons which will fight for revision of U.S. immigration laws so as to permit the entry into this country of 400,000 refugees from Europe was announced here during the week-end.
The chairman of the committee is Earl G. Harrison, former U.S. Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization and author of the report which led to President Truman’s original demand for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jewish DP’s. Harrison is also U.S. representative on the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees. Among notables who attended the organizational meeting on Friday were former Gov. Herbert H. Lehman; Cardinal Spellman; the Rt. Rev. Henry S. George Tucker; David Dubinsky, ILCWU president; former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roberts; former Justice Joseph Proskauer Charles P. Taft; Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan; Dr. Alvin Johnson; Leon Henderson; Marshal Field; Jacob Potofsky, and Walter White, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
As its first act, the committee wired President Truman announcing its plan to fight for the admission of 400,000 DP’s and expressed the belief that this number could be admitted within the present quota limitations of 153,000 per year. The 400,000 figure was based on Gov. Lehman’s estimate of “our fair share” of displaced persons.
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