Department of Justice Orders Refugees to Leave Country; Extension of Stay Sought

Between 1,700 and 1,900 stateless refugees, a large part of them Jewish, have received notices of forthcoming deportation from the Department of Justice. Resident in the United States from two to seven years, the refugees originally entered on emergency visas obtained through the Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, which President Roosevelt established.

The status of the refugees is uncertain at the moment. Interested agencies are trying to secure extension of their visas, since the Department of Justice has denied them pre-examination procedure. This procedure would allow them to go to Canada and return under the quota, thus regularizing their status. Requests for visa extension have been filed. The policy of the Department, however, has been not to grant the extensions but, over a period of several months, to send form letters asking the recipients to prepare to leave the country.

The refugees are said to have established themselves successfully in various communities and to be earning their way, and none is considered likely to become a public charge.

Reached at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Philadelphia, Eugene M. Culp, special assistant to Commissioner Ugo Carusi, said he did not know how the 1,700-1,900 figure had been arrived at. He denied that there was anything unusual in deporting aliens who had overstayed their temporary visas. He admitted, however, that during the last year, since transportation had become available, deportation proceedings had been taken against “certain types of cases” which had been allowed to remain here during the war by extension of their temporary visas. A number of them had been returned to the American zone in Germany, he said.

Asked about the destination of the “stateless” refugees, Culp said that in the eyes of the Department there is no such thing as a “stateless person,” that they are deported to their country of birth or to the country in which they last resided. If neither country will admit them, they cannot be deported, he explained. Russia, he said, and all the Russian-dominated and controlled countries in Central and Eastern Europe – including Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – will not admit refugees. No aliens have been deported to Poland since before the war, he added.

Legislation which is in the process of seeing drafted by various interested groups, for presentation at the next session of Congress nuns the gamut from a proposed study of the entire immigration process, to a change in the immigration laws enabl- ing use of unused quotas, such as the British and German, for example, for displaced persons. Another proposal will be for a fixed bloc of visas outside the regular quota, to be applied over an emergency period.

The divergence in the Department of Justice attitude and President Truman’s de expressed policy on admission of displaced persons, is evident. If the refugees who an have received deportation orders are forced to leave the country, many of them will or become displaced persons, and returned to the DP centers in Germany and Austria which said the President has tried to depopulate.