Congressman John Rankin of Mississppi has blooked passage of a bill which would allow the entry into the United States of the father of two Jewish boys who are now serving in the United States Army.
The father, Moses Tennenbaum, who is now in Cuba, is prevented by a technicality in the immigration laws from joining his children in America. The boys appeared in uniform before the House Immigration Committee last week and related how they had been separated from their father and mother for almost five years by a technicality. The Immigration Committee unanimously endorsed a special bill which would permit the father to enter this country. The State Department also approved the bill.
However, when Congressman Dickstein of New York, chairman of the Immigration Committee, asked the House for unanimous consent for immediate consideration of the bill, Rankin objected. He insisted that the bill go to the Committee on Rules. “I am not in favor of breaking down our immigration laws piecemeal,” he said. “I am not in favor of breaking them down by collateral attack; I am not in favor of using the Chinese as a smoke screen to break them down; I am not in favor of using the war as an excuse to destroy the immigration laws that it took us so long to build up, and that the American people expect us to sustain and not to destroy.”
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.
