Mexican Labor Minister Says Post-war Jewish Immigration Would Benefit His Country

The belief that Jewish immigration to Mexico would have a beneficial effect on the development of the country was expressed here today by Mexican Labor Minister Francisco Trujillo Gurria in an interview with the Jewish telegraphic Agency. Sr. Gurria, at the same time, condemned racial discrimination.

“I believe that in the post-war period we must strive to industrialize those countries which are overpopulated and to increase the population of those with a small demographic density,” the Minister said. “The world must be set in balance, and America can and must absorb a migration of workers; but a migration such as was outlined at the Demographic Congress held in the Mexican capital, in which no prejudice as to race, color or creed must intervene, since a just peace cannot exist as long as any kind of discrimination is tolerated.”

“When I was Governor of Tabasco,” he continued, “I studied and prepared a bill to accommodate 1,500 Jewish families from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. I intended to make this experiment in migration, a profitable matter not only for the immigrants, but also for my own country. We planned to give them land and to assign a Mexican family to each immigrant family in order to attain fraternal collaboration. Unfortunately, the difficulties created by the present war and the end of my constitutional mandate frustrated the realization of such a project.

“I still believe that this kind of immigration would have been beneficial to Mexico. The Jewish immigrants are useful for countries with a small density of population. They are hard working people, they adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they live and contribute to the progress of those nations which open their doors to them,” the Labor Minister concluded.