President Coolidge Urged to Support Bill Liberalizing Immigration Law

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

President Coolidge was urged by Congressman Nathan D. Perlman, Congressman Mills and Senator Wadsworth, in an interview granted them at the White House, to exert every effort with Congress to further the adoption of legislation exempting from the quota the wives, children, husbands and parents of citizens and declarants, in accordance with the sympathy expressed by him in his last annual message toward the relief of the hardships caused by the separation of families.

The President, it is understood, received the delegation very cordially and promised to give serious consideration to Congressman Perlman’s bill, which was the basis of the interview.

If the present Immigration Law, said the President, deprives people in this country “of the comfort and society of those bound to them by close family ties, such modifications should be adopted as will afford relief, always in accordance with the principle that our Government owes its first duty to its own people, and that no alien, inhabitant of another country, has any legal rights whatever under our Constitution and laws. But we should not be forgetful of the obligations of common humanity.”

The President stated, however, that he could not commit himself to any definite points of liberalization and before reaching a decision will take up the question with Secretary of Labor Davis.

Following the conference with the President, Senator Wadsworth introduced into the Senate a bill differing from Congressman Perlman’s in that the above mentioned relatives of declarants admitted to the United States since July, 1924 should be exempted and relatives of declarants who came to America before that date should receive preference within the quota. Senator Wadsworth’s bill would not exempt children over twenty-one, while Congressman Perlman’s measure calls for the exemption of all children regardless of age.

Senator Wadsworth’s action in introducing a bill so nearly similar to Perlman’s is regarded as a great victory for advocates of the liberalization since Senator Wadsworth has been known as a restrictionist, having voted for the present quota law.

A branch of the Agudath Israel was established in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Rabbis Garfinkel, Kahane, Gottesman and Mr. Goldstein spoke of the principles of the Agudath Israel. Mr. Wilhelm announced that the school for girls. “Thora Vodaat,” will be taken over by the branch of the Agudath Israel, as the first modern but strictly Orthodox school of this kind. The name of the school will be Beth Jacob, like all the schools for girls under the supervision of the Agudath Israel in Eastern Europe and Palestine.

A committee consisting of Rabbis Baumel, Lewin. Kahane, Kahn, Gottesman and Messrs. Weberman, Wilhelm, Mendlowitsch and Lewin was elected.

Contracts for the sale of Temple Emanu-el, at Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, New York City, to Benjamin Winter were signed following the approval by the membership of the Temple at a special meeting of the agreement made by Mr. Winter with the Board of Trustees of the temple to purchase the property for $6,500,000, the Temple to receive as part payment the Vincent Astor house at Sixty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, which will be the site of a new and larger temple.

The pen with which the contracts were signed will be placed, according to Mr. Winter, in the cornerstone of the new temple, with the names of those present at the signing engraved upon it. They included Mr. Winter and his legal representative, Maurice E. Gossett, William I. Spiegelberg and Henry M. Toch of the Board of Trustees of the temple, and G. R. Jewett of the Manufacturers Trust Company, where the contracts were signed.