Unsympathetic. and downright obstructionist administration of the act under Scott McLeod. the Security Chief in the State Department. compounded the shortcomings of the faulty law. One of the first things the Lehman amendments would do is remove the program from the State Department Security Bureau. where it does not belong. and place it under a fulltime administrator. who would be free from all other duties. Of especial interest to you. also. should be the Lehman proposal to eliminate technical distinctions between socalled refugees and socalled escapees. and to establish only one category to include those who have escaped from behind the Iron Curtain and those refugees from the aftermath of World War II . In addition. the opprobrious term "ethnic" Is struck from the act. Other improvements are in line with returning the program to its avowed humanitarian purposes. But. although the refugee program is presently holding the attention of the public. we must not lose sight of our fundamental national immigration policy. Our policy today. of course. is unfortunately expressed on the statute books in the terms of the McCarranWalter Immigration Act. How have the Republican leaders stood on that act? Here. again. we have examples of broken campaign promises. During his 1952 campaign. candidate Eisenhower repeatedly attacked the provisions of the McCarranWalter Act and demanded that "a better law must be written." He also stated that "getting rid of secondclass American citizenship * *includes rewriting the unfair provisions of the McCarran Immigration Act." After his election. President Eisenhower renewed his general promises to the people and suggested to Congress some generally innocuous improvements in the law. But.
Keywords matched
Immigration immigration refugee refugees