Senate Body Hears Jewish Views on Mccarran Immigration Law

Speaking on behalf of organized Jewry in the United States, Rabbi Abraham J. Feldman, president of the Synagogue Council of America, today told the Senate immigration subcommittee that the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act is “immersed in racist feeling.” He advocated a substitute for the “racist formula” of fixing the immigration quota on the basis of the U.S. population census of 1920.

Testifying before the committee, Rabbi Feldman said that the “most serious shortcoming” of the immigration law is the retention of the national origins quota system under which the immigration quota of each country is based on the racial makeup of the U. S. population in 1920. He pointed out that this formula is compounded of bigotry and ignorance.

The rabbi said that the intentions of the authors of the McCarran Walter Act was obviously “to encourage immigration of English, French, Irish Germans and other Western Europeans and to discourage all other immigration.” He advocated “distribution of visas on a first-come, first-served basis, with preferences for relatives of citizens or legal residents and for victims of racial, religious, or political persecution and those who possess special skills.”

Senator Herbert H. Lehman, speaking before the subcommittee on its second day of hearings, said the best way to amend the present law is by a new omnibus bill which he has proposed along with a dozen other Senators. The new bill would abolish the national origins quota system and provide for immigration under a “unified quota system.” He explained that immigration would then be designed to bring relatives of citizens, people with special skills, victims of racial and religious persecution, and refugees and orphans, and those who promote U.S. foreign policy interests into the United States.