A resolution calling upon President Eisenhower and the new Congress to give top priority to the revision of the new immigration and naturalization law was adopted here tonight at a meeting against the McCarran-Wal ter Immigration Act sponsored by the American Jewish Congress. More than 1,500 persons attended the rally which was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The resolution urged that the revision of the McCarran-Walter Law include at least four major principles: elimination of the national origins quota system, abolition of distinctions between native-born and naturalized citizens, a reform of deportation provisions to permit expulsion only of persons who obtained entry by fraudulent or illegal means and guarantee of fair hearing and review for all persons subject to American immigration laws.
Commissioner Edward Corsi, former head of the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission, in a statement to the meeting, called attention to President Eisenhower’s pledge during the election campaign to modify the McCarran-Walter Act, and declared that “affirmative action on the part of Congress to carry out this pledge will do much to convince the world that we not only believe in democracy but act according to its principles.” Commissioner Corsi also pointed out that a new immigration statute, in itself, would not be sufficient, but that “the administration of a newly conceived law should be placed in the hands of agencies which are sympathetically administered.”
Domestic Relations Court Justice Justine Polier sharply attacked members of Congress who injected racial and religious bigotry in the debate on the McCarran-Walter bill. “Let the gentlemen in the Senate and House who violated the spirit of the Bill of Rights when they injected racial and religious bigotry in the debate on the McCarran-Walter bill,” Judge Polier urged, “now put away this ugly and infamous stock-in-trade and become representatives of the entire American people.”
A speech prepared by Senator Hubert Humphrey and read at the meeting by his legislative counsel, Max H. Kampelman, declared that the sudden stepping up of officially sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet sphere, which creates the real possibility that the number of Jews among escapees from behind the Iron Curtain will increase in the near future, is the kind of emergency which demonstrates the urgent necessity for revision of the “rigid, racist” provisions of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act.
“As of today,” Sen. Humphrey declared, “we still don’t know how far that ruthless group in the Kremlin intends to go. But we must face the brutal fact that if it will serve their purposes, the men responsible for Katyn will not bat an eyelash at creating another Auschwitz. The spirit of America, the spirit of our people and the spirit of our religious traditions rejects the notion that there is room for discrimination and bigotry an our immigration laws.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
