State Department Issues Data on Number of Applicants for U.S. Visas in Israel

A spokesman for the State Department denied today that the Department has received “urgent” requests from American consulates in Israel for diplomatic and administrative reinforcements to process an alleged flood of Israeli applicants for emigration to the United States.

The Department said it has no record of 10,000 active Israeli applications for American visas, a figure which was mentioned in reports from Israel earlier this week. One consular official who returned from Israel a few days ago said that a figure of 3,000 would be more nearly accurate and that most of this number was made up of Jewish refugees from Shanghai who were resettled in Israel.

At the same time, the State Department revealed that a total of 335 U.S. immigration visas were issued in Haifa to Jews between July 1, 1948, and June 30, 1949. The number of approved applications registered at the Haifa consulate, however, was much greater. Approved applications registered at Haifa from January 1 of this year to April 28 are subdivided into countries of birth of applicants. The listing includes: Austrian, 913 regular quota and 15 non-quota preference cases; Czechoslovakia, 524 and 12; Danzig, 24; Iran, 11; Latvia, 60 and 2; Palestine (native born) 1,464 and 43; Poland, 2,846 and 74; and Syria, 70 and 6. It could not be immediately determined here if the figure of 1,464 native born Palestinians were all Jews.

In the first six months of 1949 a total of 341 visas, including both tourists’ temporary entry permits and immigration visas, were issued at the Haifa consulate. A check of statistics received here from Tel Aviv during the first three months of 1949 indicates that 362 visas were issued in that city–all of the non-immigration variety to admit students and others, including tourists, for temporary visits.