A call for outright rejection of the McCarran-Walter Omnibus Immigration Bills now pending in Congress was made here today by Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, in an open letter to Rep. Francis E. Walter.
Dr. Goldstein, replying to charges that he had presented a false picture of the proposed legislation, denounced it as “restrictive beyond any possibility of improvement” and warned that years of effort to achieve a liberal and humane immigration policy “now stand in total jeopardy.” He declared the new bills would introduce provisions “frankly racist in intention” and would continue the present national origins immigration policy which he said Rep. Walter himself conceded to be racist in intent.
Other provisions of the bill, Dr. Goldstein declared, were “loose, reckless and needlessly harsh.” He stressed the need for careful examination of the bills but charged such examination was being frustrated by the “unaccountable haste” with which the sponsors of the bills “are attempting to jam this legislation through Congress.”
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