Jewish Congress Leader Urges Eisenhower to Act on Mccarran Law

President Eisenhower was urged today by Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, to implement the generalized statements on civil rights and immigration contained in his State of the Union message with detailed proposals for legislative action.

Speaking before the annual luncheon of the Women’s Division of the AJC, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Dr. Goldstein declared that while “all Americans welcome the President’s affirmation of our goal as the equality of rights of all citizens of every race and color and creed, many of us hope that the omission in his message of any reference to measures and programs long regarded as indispensable for progress in this field does not represent their deliberate rejection by the President, but was due to the need for generalization in so comprehensive a message.”

Noting with gratitude that President Eisenhower “has stamped our present immigration policy as one which does in fact discriminate,” and that he has called for the enactment of a new statute. Dr. Goldstein expressed the hope that “the President will not limit his role to enunciating goals and purposes but that he will lend the full weight of his influence to the initiation and support of detailed proposals. “

Charging that “a committee such as has already been appointed by Congress to review the McCarran-Walter Act, and on which sit the authors of that law, is unlikely to make any such proposals,” the American Jewish Congress president declared: “The report of the Perlman Committee on Immigration and Naturalization has charted the course for the achievement of the goals President Eisenhower has set forth. He should make those recommendations his own.”