Restricted Post-war Immigration to the United States Urged

Restricted post-war immigration into the United States is advocated by Robert Moses, New York City and State official, in an article in the March issue of the Readers Digest.

“Our first duty is to provide our own population, including the returning members of the armed forces, with work, food, shelter and a decent chance to enjoy the victory which they have earned,” Mr. Moses writes. Our present quota system, he believes, is the most equitable solution found thus far. He adds that although each nation has had a fixed quota since 1929 which limited total immigration from all countries to 150,000 a year, the legal quotas have never been filled. He claims that between 1931 and 1940 Germany and Austria sent 153,000 less immigrants than their quota called for. From Ireland, Italy and Poland also fewer people arrived than the quotas allowed.

Claiming that the United States has been far more liberal in immigration laws than any other great nation, Mr. Moses says that between 1820 and 1942 America admitted over 38,000,000 immigrants who have created at least one half the population of the United States, and have brought to it the strength, the skill and the talent of every race on the globe. But, he claims, the enormous floods of immigrants who entered in the first quarter of the twentieth century clogged America’s economic, administrative, social and cultural systems in scores of ways. The strain was too great on the language, on the schools, on housing, on crime, disease and dependency, on congestion of urban centers and on labor and employment, and it became clear that the tremendous unselective mass migrations without let or hindrance had to stop. The quota system proved the best solution, he asserts.