IMMIGRATION: Travel Log

Pending last week in Congress were some 70 bills against aliens: to keep aliens out of the U. S., to send aliens now in the U. S. back where they came from, to make life uncomfortable for many who remain.

Behind all these measures was a deep U. S. conviction that 1) millions of people in other parts of the world would rather be in the U. S.; 2) this clamorous tide threatens the wellbeing of the immigrants and descendants of immigrants who got to the U. S. first. Astonishing, therefore, to many a citizen were some immigration facts released last week by the U. S. State Department, which, with the Department of Labor, controls the immigration floodgates.

Most astonishing fact was that only 38% (58,853) of last fiscal year's immigrant quota was filled. According to the State Department's travel log:

> Permitted quotas for Germany (27,370), Poland (6,524), Czecho-Slovakia (2,874), Hungary (869), Lithuania (386), Yugoslavia (845), Albania (100), were filled to the last refugee chink.*

> Russia used 2,583 of its quota of 2,712 visas; Finland, 473 of its 569.

> Biggest proportion of the 94,921 unused visas was British. Given the largest of all quotas (65,721), Great Britain and North Ireland used only 3,604 (5%).

> France used only 1,031 of its 3,086; Sweden, a piddling 351 of its 3,314; Eire, only 1,453 of its 17,853 (the vast tide of Irish immigration began to dwindle 50 years ago ).

> By law, all nations may send at least 100 annually to the U. S. Bhutan (in the Himalayas), the British Cameroons, Liechtenstein, Muscat, Nauru, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Yap and ten others sent none.

> By special discrimination, crowded China and Japan are limited to the minimum: 100. China sent 100. Japan sent 19.

Begging admission to the U. S. at year's end were 657,353 suffering men and women (including 309,782 from Germany; 115,222 from Poland; 51,272 from Czechoslovakia; 32,836 from Hungary). The tiny Dominican Republic is welcoming refugees. France last week answered the frequent charge that it has admitted and then mistreated myriads of German and Spanish fugitives, showed that the French have at least done something. The U. S. people up to last week's end had shown no inclination to do anything for the world's refugees except read about them. If the U. S. did want to do something, obvious step would be for Congress to amend the quota law. Obvious amendments would temporarily reduce favored Great Britain's unfilled allotment, write off uninterested Yap, Bhutan etc., up the quotas for Germany, Poland, etc., without necessarily increasing the total immigrant quota.