The American Jewish Congress today demanded the abolition of the 1924 national origins quota system which allocates immigration visas according to place of birth. It also urged the immediate enactment of a new immigration law which would permit the distribution of visas on a “first come, first-served” basis, without differentiation as to race or place of birth.
Testifying before a joint Senate-House Committee on Immigration, Will Maslow, representative of the American Jewish Congress, denounced the present system as basically racist. The Committee, which is conducting hearings on omnibus immigration bills introduced by Sen. McCarran of Nevada and Rep. Walter of Pennsylvania, was told by Mr. Maslow that the national origins formula “was no legislative accident but was deliberately designed to limit the number of immigrants from South and East Europe, and is a compound of bigotry and ignorance.”
Urging the rejection of both the McCarran and Walter measures because they continue use of the national origins formula, the American Jewish Congress representative asserted that adoption of these bills “would reveal that we have learned nothing in one-quarter of a century, that our prejudices have remained untarnished by the light of knowledge.”
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