The present United States regular immigration law is “racist in concept and racist in application,” Walter H. Bieringer, president of United Service for New Americans, declared last night in an address calling for efforts to re-codify and modernize the “quota” system, Mr. Bieringer spoke at the opening dinner of the two-day annual conference of USNA.
He pointed out that the “quota” system, which he called a “means of excluding immigrants from many countries, “is keeping many Jewish refugees from this country. Underlining that there is “a real job to do” in democratizing the U.S. immigration law, Mr. Bieringer reported that Sen. Herbert H. Lehman of New York and 14 other Senators of both parties are sponsoring a bill to make available unused quota numbers to countries with a large prospective immigration but without sufficient quota numbers.
The USNA president said that there is a favorable climate of public opinion in American toward immigration and refugee aid which is “largely due to the joint efforts of agencies of all faiths concerned with the refugee problem.” In a review of the agency’s record during 1951, he said that it had assisted more than 75 percent of the Jews eligible under the DP Immigration Act to come to the U.S. and resettle. Of the minimum 8,500 Jewish immigrants in various categories expected to come to this country in 1952, he estimated that 80 percent or higher would be aided by USNA.
In an address delivered by Ugo Carusi, American representative of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for U.N. High Commissioner Dr. G.J. van Heuven Goedhart, the Commissioner outlined for the 400 guests at the dinner the problems facing his office which has responsibility for protecting the interests of an estimated 1,500,000 refugees in various parts of the world. John W. Gibson, chairman of the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission, which completed its program on December 31 last, said that the program under which 339,000 visas were issued to DP’s since late in 1948 “was a complete success.”
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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.
