Projects for the resettlement of German refugees are being “vigorously pushed” in the Philippines, Australia and the Dominican Republic and are already under way in the first two countries, Charles J. Liebman president of the Refugee Economic Corporation, reports in the current issue of Notes and News, published by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.
In an article on “New Lands for Settlement,” Mr. Liebman states that about 1,000 immigrants have entered the Philippines in the past year under a policy of selective immigration. Acting in cooperation with the American High Commissioner, the Philippine Government, and local Jewish welfare agencies, the Refugee Economic Corporation, he asserts, embarked on a program under which prospective migrants were chosen in Germany “on the basis of their ability to engage in occupations insufficiently represented in the Islands.”
Settlers are now being selected, Mr. Liebman adds, for a colony on the island of Mindanao, land for which has already been bought by the Refugee Economic Corporation. A commission of American government experts who investigated the Island at the request of the Commonwealth of the Philippines has suggested the colonization of 10,000 refugees on a selected piece of land affording a pleasant climate suitable for Western people.
In Australia, more than 500 refugees are already gainfully occupied as farmers in New South Wales, Mr. Liebman reports. The project has been sponsored by “Mutual Farms Proprietary, Ltd.”, set up in September, 1938, through the cooperation of the Refugee Economic Corporation and the Australian Jewish Welfare Society. The Society has established two farm training schools in the area.
“The success of this agricultural settlement scheme, “Mr. Liebman states, “has prepared the ground for additional refugee enterprises in Australia. At the suggestion of the Refugee Economic Corporation and financed by it, a new organization, ‘Mutual Enterprises Proprietary, Ltd.’, has recently been formed to utilize the special skills of emigres in developing manufacturing industries. The Australian authorities, satisfied that the economic approach to the problem could not but benefit the Commonwealth as a whole, have lent their encouragement and support to this project. Since the close of the year 1938, moreover, the Corporation has appropriated additional funds for the financing of dairy farms in Western Australia, with the Government providing the land and consenting to repayment over a period of 35 years. The marked shift in public opinion on the desirability of admitting refugees is reflected in altered immigration quotas adopted in 1938. While fewer than 600 German immigrants were permitted to enter the Commonwealth in 1937, 15,000 are to be admitted in the next three years.”
The project for refugee settlement in the Dominican Republic, recently announce by the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, may ultimately absorb “tens of thousands” of settlers, Mr. Liebman writes. A corporation under the auspices of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation is now being formed to finance the work.
Pointing out that Palestine is still the largest single haven because of “its continuing facility for absorbing refugees economically and spiritually,” Mr. Liebman urges greater emphasis on that country as a refugee center.
“Its economic development,” he declares, “is a telling argument for its own expansion and counfounds both those skeptics who have prophesied failure and those who in the past have tried to assert that the Jew is not an agricultural and industrial pioneer.”
Several projects, he states, came into existence with the aid of the Inter-governmental Committee. The war has hindered the growth of developments in New Caledonia and other areas and forced the temporary abandonment of the project in British Guiana. Describing the difficulties imposed on resettlement work by governmental policies of “economic isolation and immigration restriction” and the additional hardships brought by the war, Mr. Liebman asserts that “the wonder is not that so little but that so much has been accomplished.”
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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.
