Propaganda poster promoting use of fertilizer in Indonesia, 6/9/1952.
Series: Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, ca. 1950 - 1955
Record Group 306: Records of the U.S. Information Agency, 1900 - 2003
Image description: Panel illustration. First panel shows a cow and reads PUPUK KANDANG [manure]; second panel shows a farmer working a field near haystacks and reads PUPUK KOMPOS [compost]; third panel shows farmers spreading something on a field and reads MEMUPUK SAWAH [cultivating rice fields]. Overlaid is a farmer smiling and holding a large bundle, and reads HASILNJA BERLIPAT GANDA [results double].
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“The present National Origins quota system was born of prejudice and racism. . . . [the McCarren] Bill would make immigration more restrictive.” Press Release from the National Conference of Catholic Charities, 6/6/1952.
File Unit: Immigration - Letters and Memoranda re [3 of 4], 1945 - 1953
Series: David D. Lloyd's Subject Files, 1945 - 1953
Collection: David D. Lloyd White House Files (Truman Administration), 1945 - 1953
Transcription:
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC CHARITIES
1346 Connecticut Avenue, N. W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Statement of Rt. Rev. Msgr. John O'Grady, Secretary
For immediate release
June 6, 1952
During the past few weeks we have had the first real national educational program on the Christian doctrine of immigration in twenty-seven years. This, as we all know, is very dear to the
heart of our Holy Father. The present National Origins quota system was born of prejudice and racism. Anyone who reads the McCarran Omnibus Immigration Bill carefully and in light of the Reports that were made on it by the Committees, must recognize that this Bill would make
immigration more restrictive. For instance when one considers its failure to give parents of aliens any preference, and its continuation of the mortgages on quotas under the Displaced
Persons Act, one begins to see readily that it would make it impossible for many families to be reunited for the next twenty years. The Greek quota is mortgaged until the year 2013; the
quota for Hungary is mortgaged until the year 1985; and the Lithuanian quota is mortgaged until the year 2087.
In his press release of June 2, Mr. Bruce Mohler, Director, Bureau of Immigration, National Catholic Welfare Conference, states that the McCarran Bill "removes existing racial barriers to
admissibility and citizenship." It very generously gives a quota of 100 to the people of the Philippine Islands, to a people who heretofore could come in without any limitations. Then it goes on to provide that a person of Philippine origin who is living in Brazil, even the son of a Filipino mother and a Brazilian father, would be counted against the Philippine quota. I wonder who could convince people in the Philippine Islands that this is a liberal immigration Bill. Japan also has a quota of 100.
Mr. Mohler goes on to say that "the bill originates a series of preference classes, thus establishing, for the first time under U. S. immigration law, a policy of selective immigration." I would say this sets up an arbitrary system. What
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qualifications do the officials of the Immigration Service have for selecting skilled people? How many skilled people are selected for jobs in our own country by any governmental agency?
Again Mr. Mohler says that "all visas not taken up by the preference classes are to be given to regular quota immigrants." I wonder how Mr. Mohler would explain this to countries
whose quotas have been mortgaged for fifty years? I wonder how he would explain to people whose quotas have been used entirely by preference classes?
One of the worst provisions of the MCarran Bill as originally reported to the Senate was that a person who contracted mental illness at any time after entry, eve forty years after coming to the United States, was liable to deportation. Even if the person had been ill for only a short time and the cost of medical care had been paid for by the family or by the person himself,
nevertheless he could be deported. In the amendment, which was forced by the opposition, only mental illness contracted within five years after entry makes a person subject to deportation.
A temporary illness contracted during this period would make a person liable to deportation even if the cost of medical care were provided by his family. In order to resist deportation the
person would have to prove not to the satisfaction of a court, but to an agent of the Immigration Service, that the illness resulted from causes developing after entry.
Another serious objection to the McCarran Bill is that it really makes naturalized citizens second class citizens. It makes naturalization of sort of temporary license which is granted to a
person, one might say, at the pleasure of the police officer. It is pointed out clearly in the Report of the House Committee that one of the purposes of this provision was to make
denaturalization easier. Before World War I the naturalized citizen had the same status as any other citizen. Then in order to take care of a few Nazis, fraud was made a basis for
denaturalization. Now the McCarran Bill would make it relatively easy for a citizen to be denaturalized.
When we talk about improvements in the McCarran Bill we have to recognize
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representatives of the various Catholic organizations that wer assembled in Washington on March 3, 1952. How can we as Catholics support a Bill that virtually regards millions of our own
people, including Italians, Poles, Croats, Slovenes, Lithuanians, as second-class citizens, a bill that is based on the doctrine of Nordic superiority a bill that is based on a one-culture pattern in
our country. It is interesting to note that the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S. A., the National Lutheran Council, the American Friends Service Committee - one might say practically all the large Protestant Churches and Jewish organizations - have spoken with one voice against the basic principles involved in the McCarran Bill.
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