Harry N. Rosenfield, executive director of the President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, which investigated the workings of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, today took issue with Rep. Francis Walter’s charge on the floor of Congress yesterday that “professional Jews” were the only opponents of the law.
Mr. Rosenfield, who is a former member of the United States Displaced Persons Commission, pointed out that the opposition to the McCarran-Walter measure came not only from Jews but from prominent Catholic and Protestant spokesmen including Archbishop Cushing of Boston, Cardinal Mooney of Detroit, Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles and Werner Kuntz, director of the Lutheran Service to Refugees. Mr. Rosenfield’s statements came after Rep. Walter, amplifying his remarks in Congress during an interview with reporters in his chambers, named Mr. Rosenfield as the man he had in mind when he hit out at “professional Jews.”
Stepping down as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in which all immigration bills in the House originate, Rep. Emanuel Celler today conceded that there was little chance to revise the McCarran-Walter law at this session of Congress. Rep. Celler said he stands behind President Truman and the President’s Commission in recommending an overhaul of the McCarran Act “in accordance with our finest traditions.”
Rep. Lester Holtzman, of New York, said today that he was “shocked and disillusioned by anti-Jewish remarks made in Congress yesterday by Rep. Francis E. Walter and by “the round of applause which followed. ” Following Rep. Walter’s attacks on “professional Jews,” mail has been received by a number of Jewish Congressmen containing Nazi-like insults.
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.
