The United States Government and American industry should both work toward estahlishing freer immigration policies both in this country and throughout the world, an article on world migration in the October issue of Fortune Magazine points out.
American “quotas” for admitting immigrants are criticized as being not only “too low” but based on “emotional prejudice rather than economic reality,” and the immigration system is scored as being “throttled by red tape and buroaucratic rigidity.” Only a part of available quotas are being used at the present time, it is stated.
While it is impossible to abolish quotas overnight, the article states, there can be freer immigration right now by reversing the direction of the present restrictive immigration policy, “along with the prejudices upon which this policy is based.” The Stratton Bill to admit 400,000 refugees in four years is a stop in that direction, it is pointed out, as is active support of the work of such bodies as the International Refugee Organization.
Spiking the fears of those who maintain that immigration increases unemployment, the article emphasizes that immigration adjusts to the business cycle rather than the business cycle adjusting to immigration, pointing out that in the early depression years of 1931 and 1932 some 68,000 more persons left the United States than entered the country. Thus, it points out, “migration acts to mitigate unemployment in depressions by tending to revsrse the normal rate of increase of the working population.”
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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.
