Dr. Samuel Margoshes, recently returned from a two-month tour of Poland, at a press conference today charged the Justice Department with “sabotaging the intent of the President’s directive” to facilitate immigration of refugees and displaced persons to the United States.
Margoshes said that he had seen, in Stockholm, a copy of a “secret directive” which instructed American consular offices in East European countries to “pay more attention to the screening of affidavits, from relatives or friends in the United States, honoring only those that show unusually high income tax or that come from such close in as father, mother, sister or brother” and to reject “all other affidavits.”
In a conversation he had with Gerald Keith, charges d’affaires at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Keith told Margoshes that it would take from three to six months before they would be ready to issue the first visa from Poland because of the difficulty of assembling a staff. The American Consulate in Stockholm is well-staffed, said Margoshes, but they have been advised to go very slow in issuing visas.
The World Jewish Congress will take up the matter of these “secret directives” with the State Department and Justice Department, Margoshes said.
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