A House-Senate staff report on the operation of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act published today reported that immigration has increased under the Act, but it found some parts of the law unworkable or badly administered.
Both proponents and opponents of the law might find arguments in their favor in this first report on the operation of the controversial law. It was ordered last Summer by the then Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee. It was made by a professional staff headed by Walter M. Besterman, staff chief of the House Immigration Subcommittee, after consulting Senate staff members.
The report avoids all basic questions of immigration policy which many pending bills seek to revise, It found “an increase of 22 percent” in the total number of aliens–208, 188–admitted for permanent residence in the United States in the fiscal year of 1954. But much of this increase was due to sociological rather than legislative causes. It came largely from Western Hemisphere nations, mostly Mexico, where there is no quota limit on immigration.
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