“The United States will maintain its tradition of hospitality so long as the majority of the people in this country remember that immigration made us great and recognize its continuing positive value,” William Rosenwald, president of the National Refugee Service, states in his presidential report for this year made public today.
“Who will be the immigrants of the future and how large will the influx be?” Mr. Rosenwald asks in his report. “Something better than pure speculation is possible on this subject. The records of this agency contain some three quarters of a million names of refugees overseas and of relatives here who are concerned about their fate. Many of these records represent broken families in which the wife may be on one side of the ocean and the husband on the other, or the father may be here, the mother a deportee in Poland, one child in England, and another in Shanghai. Many such families await the day of reunion. The task of bringing this about will, of course, engage the attention of our own and other governments, of such institutions as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the Red Cross, and of various private philanthropic organizations, notably the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. To that task N.R.S. will bring a considerable contribution. It will make available its records of refugees, probably the most extensive in existence, and its organization and experience.”
Joseph E. Beck, executive director of the N.R.S., estimate that about 4,200 Jewish immigrants and an additional 1,000 Jewish refugees on temporary visas arrived in the United States during 1943. “In the course of the year practically every able-bodied refugee known to N.R.S., who was not previously employed, was placed in a job by N.R.S., or found a position through his own efforts,” he said in his report. “Many who even a year before were considered unemployable due to old age or other handicaps were placed in positions which made them wholly or partly self-dependent.”
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