Members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have joined to take the Administration to task because only six persons have been admitted to this country under the Emergency Refugee Act of 1953.
Proposed by President Eisenhower and enacted last August, the program was designed to admit 209, 000 refugees in three years. R. W. Scott McLeod, State Department security chief who administers the program, has blamed the lag on unforeseen red tape problems. But Rep. J. Vaughan Gray, Virginia Democrat, said that some $672,000 has already been spent and suggested Congress should repeal the Act if the Administration cannot implement it.
Rep. Jacob K. Javits, New York Republican, said the program is becoming a “national scandal” and promised to attempt to learn if McLeod is administering the Act as Congress intended. Another Republican, Rep. H.R. Gross, of Iowa, said the situation is “unbelievable” and that “if the Act is repealed forthwith, it can’t be too soon.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
