The Senate immigration Sub-committee will probably begin open hearings tomorrow on the breakdown of the refugee relief program, Senator William Langer, its chairman, announced today.
The committee prepared for public testimony at executive sessions yesterday and today at which it heard Scott McLeod, the State Department security chief and administrator of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953; Edward J. Corsi, whose ouster as migration adviser to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles brought the whole refugee relief program under scrutiny, and Lieut. Gen. Joseph E. Swing, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization.
The committee is studying charges made by Corsi of a complete breakdown in the refugee program and its sabotage by State Department officials. Both Secretary Dulles and program administrator McLeod deny this. The committee will also investigate the dismissal of Corsi. Senator Irving M. Ives, of New York, called on Secretary Dulles today to give the nation “all the facts” in the Corsi affair.
Meanwhile, a prominent Republican Congressman, Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, in a letter to President Eisenhower, reminded him of Republican Party campaign pledges for revision of immigration legislation.
He proposed creation of a non-partisan presidential commission to study the administration of the immigration laws. He said the Corsi case underlined the need for such a study to prevent the immigration problem form becoming a “purely political football.”
The Liberal Party of New York also called today for an investigation of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act and its administration, but proposed a Congressional inquiry.
When he appeared before the committee today, Mr. Corsi is understood to have given facts to substantiate his charge that only 1,000 refugees had actually entered this country under the provisions of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953.
Mr. McLeod told the committee yesterday that as of April 1, some 3,700 refugee visas had been issued and 1.044 refugees had entered the country. He reported that more than 23,000 other visas had been issued to relatives of immigrants already here. About 15,000 in this category, he said, have entered the country.
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