The Board of Directors of United Service for New Americans took final ratifying action at the concluding session of its annual meeting yesterday on recent proposals to merge with the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society and form a single worldwide Jewish migration agency to be called United Hias Service.
The forthcoming merger will also include the overseas migration operations of the Joint Distribution Committee. Ratification of the merger agreement by the USNA national board left only legal and statutory formalities in the way of physical consolidation of the two migration agencies.
In a special message to the delegates, President Eisenhower lauded the agency’s resettlement program and said that the efforts of United Service in the field of immigration had brought important benefits to the United States.
In a series of panel discussions conducted yesterday, some 400 Jewish resettlement leaders from all over the U.S. studied the effect of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 on their migration programs, assessed the impact of the forthcoming merger on local community operations and planned resettlement programs for 1954. Arthur Greenleigh, executive director of USNA, speaking at a luncheon meeting following the panel discussions, asserted that America’s restrictive immigration policies spring from fear rather than logic.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.