The Senate adopted today by an overwhelming voice vote the Vandenberg-Connally resolution authorizing United States participation in the International Refugee Organization.
Two amendments provide that the measure in no way affects Congressional. control of American immigration policy and limits American outlay of funds for participation in the organization to $75,000,000.
The measure was passed despite stiff Republican opposition raised by Sanator Kenneth S. Wherry, party whip, and Senator Chapman Revercomb, Republican of West Virginia. Senator Revercomb is chirman of the Sub-Committee on Immigration of the Judiciary Committee. Senators O’Daniel of Texas and Ellender of Louisana, Democras, also opposed the measure.
Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in introducting the bill, pointed out the advantages of fulfilling American commisment to the European refugees through the IRO rather than by continal expandition to the Army to do the same work alone. He reiterated that “nothing in this resolution affects one single comma in our own immigration law.”
Those who spoke in support of the bill included Senator Tom Connally of Texas, Brien McMahon of Connecticut, Carl Hatch of I’ev Mexico, and Claude Papper of Florida, Damocrats, and Charles Tobey of New Ham hire, Republican. Senator McMahon said he hoped not only that the Senate would pass the IRO resolution but that the Congress would “see fit to admit some of these persons and operate on a policy of do as we do instead of do as we say.”
Senator Wherry questioned the definition of refugee in the IRO charter, asserting that the peace treaties would, by boundary allocations, create whole new classes of refugees. He also asked whether the IRO was not more in the nature of a permanent organization to which Congress would be called upon to appropriate funds for “from three to five years,” and questioned the advisability of having an international organization dictate our actions in the American zones of Gemany and Austria while we are “footing the bill.”
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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.
