Speech #830161017

Greece. Italy. and the Netherlands have agreed. the German Federal Government only agreed on April 1 and the Austrian Government shortly before then. It is noteworthy that this requirement is also enforced upon immigration preference cases which are admitted under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and has only been relieved under the bill now pending in the Senate. H. R. 8193. as to orphans. Such a provision should certainly not be binding upon preference cases either. who would not otherwise be bound to such a requirement if they came in as preference cases under the immigration law. It Is essential if the objectives of the act are to be realized to work out a proper relationship under the program with voluntary agencies like the National Catholic Welfare Conference. the Church World Service. the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. the American Friends Service Society. and other organizations which were active under the displaced persons legislation. These organizations in working to implement the act. will be helped particularly if the need for getting assurances from individual citizens as to housing and a job which has slowed them up in getting such assurances is revised to permit the voluntary agencies to give such assurances. The fine objective of the United States in the Refuge Relief Act of 1953 was to attract away skilled and desirable people from behind the Iron Curtain by encouraging them to expect good treatment and resettlement if they came over into the West. These escapees do not generally have friends or other connections in the United States. hence. the voluntary organizations have to go out and find individual citizens willing to give the assurances as the assurances of the organizations themselves are not accepted under the act. The assurance of housing and a job is very hard to keep good for an adequate period of time for an escapee or refugee for as long as it takes to get a visa and for the alien to travel to the United States. In addition. there is no assurance that the alien once here can keep that particular job or that particular home. It would seem to be adequate if there was an assurance satisfactory to the Administrator from a voluntary organization according to the practice successfully followed under the displaced persons law. that the alien would not become a public charge and that he would have a job and be housed without displacing any American. It is exactly in the immigration preference cases which are exempted from this requirement that assurances of housing and a job can be the most easily given. while insistence upon these assurances from individual citizens in respect of escapees and refugees tends to discourage the flow of escapees into the free world from behind the Iron Curtain and is in effect a way to nullify the benefits which the United States has sought by this legislation. The provisions for refugees are also high policy of the United States as they the one of the basic problems of free Europe. The Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration of 22 nations wrestling with this problem sought the leadership of the United States in the resettlement effort to take its fair share of the refugees. The State Department is authority for the statement that there are 2.500.000 unresettled escapees and refugees in Western Europe. These and similar problems make it essential that there be a much closer relationship between the voluntary organizations and the Administrator of the act and. in view of the terms of the administration of the act. this can best be achieved through the creation of a high level advisory committee to the Administrator.