Labor Secretary Makes Recommendations to Reunite Separated Families

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

The recommendations made by Secretary Davis of the Labor Department with regard to the immigration laws include the suggestions to Congress to overcome the hardships resulting from the separation of families on account of the present immigration law.

“It is my opinion that a third and final step in a complete process of selecting immigration can be accomplished if Congress will but approve some method of priority in the granting of what are now referred to as nonpreference quota visas. Of quota immigrants, on the ground of humanity, I would provide for preference to be issued to husbands, wives and minor children of alien residents in the United States,” Secretary Davis recommended in his annual report.

“Wives and unmarried children under 18 years of a citizen of the United States are non-quota immigrants under the act of 1924, which is as it should be, but the class should be extended to include the husband of an American citizen and a provision should be added permitting the entrance, if the quota be exhausted, of minor unmarried children and dependent fathers and mothers of citizens of the United States,” he declared.

The Secretary repeated recommendations first made in 1925, that Congress allow the importation of special or skilled labor, under careful restriction, when need exists in American industry. This expansion of the total immigration possible, he suggested, should be balanced off by empowering the President to shut off immigration entirely during periods of industrial depression in the United States.