<--PREV Doc #100  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #102 Document #101; March 24, 1953 To John Foster Dulles Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953 Chapter 2: "A number of misunderstandings": Party and International Struggles   Memorandum to the Secretary of State: Herewith copies of two bills brought to me by Congressman Celler.1 He, of course, believes that the one introduced by Miss Thompson, of Michigan, would create terrific trouble for us because of its discriminatory character.2 On the other hand, he believes that unless something of the order of his own bill is enacted in the law, the United States is going to lose a lot in the affected areas. He is particularly concerned about those regions in which a great refugee problem has been created.3 Turkey, Greece, West Germany, Italy and Holland are all areas about which he is deeply worried. At last Monday morning's conference, we discussed the McCarran Act with our Congressional leaders.4 They expressed the opinion that the administrative inconsistencies in the McCarran Act could be corrected without much trouble. On the other hand, they thought that any attempt to open up the quota question (even to the extent of giving the President power to use up the "unused" quota of any country) would be bitterly resisted.5 Will you please have someone make a study on this thing for my benefit? We should consider the possibility of adopting a comprehensive policy on the matter.6 1 Emanuel Celler (LL.B. Columbia 1912), ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, had represented Brooklyn, New York, in Congress since 1923. He had visited the White House on March 24 to discuss plans to introduce this bill. 2 A native of Muskegon, Michigan, Ruth Thompson had served as a local official and state legislator before wartime employment in the Labor Department and the Adjutant General's Office. In 1946-47 she had worked at military headquarters in Germany and Denmark, and then in 1951, as a Republican, she had won election to the House, where she sat on the Judiciary Committee. Her bill would have admitted to the United States a specified number of Eastern European refugees then living in the Netherlands. 3 Escapees from Communist Eastern Europe--in early 1953 nearly twenty-five hundred arrived daily in West Berlin alone--posed severe resettlement problems and focused public attention on the restrictive features of U.S. immigration policy (see below). 4 Congress had passed the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act over President Truman's veto in June 1952. While lifting restrictions on Asiatics, the law generally left in place annual national-origin quotas first established in 1924 and gave U.S. officials wide discretionary authority in denying aliens entry to the country. During the 1952 presidential campaign Eisenhower had condemned any immigration statute "that implies the blasphemy against democracy that only certain groups of Europeans are welcome on American shores" (New York Times, Oct. 17, 1952; see also Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 960). In his State of the Union address the President had requested that Congress consider changes in the act because it "contains injustices" and "does, in fact, discriminate" (Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1953, p. 31). In mid-March he reportedly had directed Dulles and Attorney General Brownell to explore amendments to the McCarran-Walter Act, and on the eighteenth he had spoken favorably of a bill that would have increased some national quotas on an emergency basis in order to relieve the Western European refugee problem (New York Times, Mar. 17, 19, 1953; see also memorandum of Eisenhower-Dulles Telephone conversation, Mar. 19, 1953, Dulles Papers, Chronological Series). 5 At the March 23 legislative meeting Senator Taft had proposed hearings on amending the McCarran-Walter Act so as to avoid revision of the quota system; he, along with Saltonstall, Martin, and Halleck, agreed that Congress likely would not change that feature of the existing law. Eisenhower had repeated his campaign pledge to achieve "greater flexibility with respect to transferring to certain countries quotas unused by others." Taft doubted that such a change to the statutes would pass (AWF/LM, Mar. 23, 1953). 6 On March 26 Dulles would recommend a temporary emergency measure allowing the admission of 240,000 "non-quota immigrants" over the next two years to relieve the pressure of refugees in Western Europe and overpopulation problems in Italy, the Netherlands, and Greece. Such legislation would stand apart from the McCarran-Walter Act and "would not deal with the general quota question." Dulles urged action before the April meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Paris, where ministers were to discuss the refugee issue; he planned a study of the McCarran-Walter Act and promised a later comprehensive proposal on the subject of immigration policy (AWF/D-H). On April 22 the President would ask both the House and the Senate to consider emergency legislation permitting "within the framework of the immigration laws" the admission of 120,000 escapees from the Iron Curtain per year for two years, an appeal that Dulles described as "very well received" at the NATO meeting (Dulles to Eisenhower, Apr. 23, 1953, ibid.; see also no. 157). Later that month the President would publicly call for examination of the "serious and inequitable restrictions" contained in the McCarran-Walter Act (New York Times, Apr. 28, 1953). For further developments see nos. 276 and 328. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To John Foster Dulles, 24 March 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 101. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/101.cfm <--PREV Doc #100  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #102

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