The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1946)
Background of news –
Refugees at U.S. doors
By Bertram Benedict
The final government ruling has yet to be handed down in the case of the two groups of Estonian refugees who have landed in Florida without immigration visas – one group on August 31, another on September 9, both in small boats that took many weeks to cross the ocean.
The United States government now has first-hand experience of what the British government is up against on immigrants who try to enter Palestine illegally.
It is only 30 Estonians who have landed in Floria from small boats within the last four weeks and many Americans would be inclined to say, “Oh, well, let them come in.” But the government knows that if these 30 are accepted, many more than 30 without visas will soon be knocking at the door. And the United States has no Island of Cyprus on which to settle illegal immigrants.
These 30 Estonians probably could be admitted under the immigration quotas now in force. The quota for Estonia is 116 a year, and probably could be considered as still effective although Estonia was re-absorbed in the Soviet Union in 1945. Annual quotas are figured by fiscal years, not calendar years.
Quota system useless
However, the quota system as it now operates can be no solution for the terrible problem of a million or more displaced persons in Europe. The total annual allowance of immigrants from all countries is about 154,000 – 150,500 from European countries, about 3,500 from elsewhere. (There are no restrictions from countries in the New World.)
Of the European quota total, the United Kingdom and Eire account for more than half. The quota for Germany and Austria combined is slightly more than 27,000; that for Poland is about 6,500; no other European country rates as high as 6,000.
Quotas are proportioned by the numbers of the foreign-born in the United States in 1890; the idea of Congress was to favor the older immigration at the expense of the latter.
Even these quotas were too much for most members of Congress, and probably for most of American public opinion, after the depression came in 1929 and especially after war broke out in Europe in 1939. The government began to issue many fewer visas for immigration than the quotas allowed; and in recent years almost no visas have been issued except in highly exceptional individual cases. Only 9,000 quota immigrants came in during 1943.
Unused quotas mean nothing
Unused quotas in any one year cannot be carried forward to another year. So it means nothing, legally, that last year’s quota total was far from filled and that the total of unused quotas in the last 20 years was around two million. Last December President Truman pointed out that many of the displaced persons were from central and eastern European countries that had a quota total of 39,000 a year. He directed that they be assigned to unused quotas but not many have come in under this directive.
President Truman’s Cabinet Committee on Palestine is believed to favor the admission of 50,000 displaced persons to the United States annually, especially if other countries will take some. President Truman said he “might” ask Congress to change the law so as to let a certain number of displaced persons come in.
But Chairman Russell of the Senate Immigration Committee said immediately that the proposal would set a dangerous precedent, and would do little for the “larger world problems of human want and misery.”