Population and Environment, 19, 295-355.

JEWISH INVOLVEMENT IN SHAPING AMERICAN IMMIGRATION POLICY,
1881-1965: A Historical Review, Part 2
Kevin MacDonald

Part 1

ABSTRACT
This paper discusses Jewish involvement in shaping United States immigration policy. In addition to a periodic interest in fostering the immigration of co-religionists as a result of anti-Semitic movements, Jews have an interest in opposing the establishment of ethnically and culturally homogeneous societies in which they reside as minorities. Jews have been at the forefront in supporting movements aimed at altering the ethnic status quo in the United States in favor of immigration of non-European peoples. These activities have involved leadership in Congress, organizing and funding anti-restrictionist groups composed of Jews and gentiles, and originating intellectual movements opposed to evolutionary and biological perspectives in the social sciences.

PART 2

Jewish Anti-Restrictionist Activity, 1924-1945.

The saliency of Jewish involvement in United States immigration policy continued after the 1924 legislation. Particularly objectionable to Jewish groups was the national origins quota system. For example, a writer for the Jewish Tribune stated in 1927, "we . . . regard all measures for regulating immigration according to nationality as illogical, unjust, and un-American" (in Neuringer, 1971, p. 205). During the 1930s the most outspoken critic of further restrictions on immigration (motivated now mainly by the Great Depression) was Representative Samuel Dickstein, and Dickstein’s assumption of the chairmanship of the House Immigration Committee in 1931 marked the end of the ability of restrictionists to enact further reductions in quotas (Divine, 1957, pp. 79-88). Jewish groups were the primary opponents of restriction and the primary supporters of liberalized regulations during the 1930s while their opponents emphasized the economic consequences of immigration during a period of high unemployment (Divine, 1957, pp. 85-88). Between 1933 and 1938, Representative Dickstein introduced a number of bills aimed at increasing the number of refugees from Nazi Germany and supported mainly by Jewish organizations, but the restrictionists prevailed (Divine, 1957, p. 93).

During the 1930s, concerns about the radicalism and unassimilability of Jewish immigrants as well as the possibility of Nazi subversion were the main factors influencing the opposition to changing the immigration laws (Breitman & Kraut, 1987). Moreover, "(c)harges that the Jews in America were more loyal to their tribe than to their country abounded in the United States in the 1930s" (Breitman & Kraut, 1987, p. 87). There was a clear perception among all parties that the public opposed any changes in immigration policy and that the public was particularly opposed to Jewish immigration. The 1939 hearings on the proposed legislation to admit 20,000 German refugee children therefore minimized the Jewish interest in the legislation. The bill referred to people "of every race and creed suffering from conditions which compel them to seek refuge in other lands".13 The bill did not mention that Jews would be the main beneficiaries of the legislation, and witnesses in favor of the bill emphasized that only approximately 60% of the children would be Jewish. The only person identifying himself as "a member of the Jewish race" who testified in favor of the bill was "one-fourth Catholic and three-quarters Jewish" with Protestant and Catholic nieces and nephews, and from the South which was a bastion of anti-immigration sentiment.14

On the other hand, opponents of the bill threatened to publicize the very large percentage of Jews already being admitted under the quota system— presumably an indication of the powerful force of a "virulent and pervasive" anti-Semitism among the American public (Breitman & Kraut, 1987, p. 80). Opponents noted that the immigration permitted by the bill "would be for the most part of the Jewish race," and a witness testified "that the Jewish people will profit most by this legislation goes without saying" (in Divine, 1957, p. 100). The restrictionists argued in economic terms, e.g., by frequently citing President Roosevelt’s statement in his second inaugural speech "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished" and citing large numbers of needy children already in the United States. However, the main restrictionist concern was that the bill was yet another in a long history of attempts by anti-restrictionists to develop precedents that would eventually undermine the 1924 law. For example, Francis Kinnecutt, President of the Allied Patriotic Societies, emphasized that the 1924 law had been based on the idea of proportional representation based on the ethnic composition of the country. The legislation would be a precedent "for similar unscientific and favored-nation legislation in response to the pressure of foreign nationalistic or racial groups, rather than in accordance with the needs and desires of the American people."15

Wilbur S. Carr and other State Department officials were important in minimizing the entry of Jewish refugees from Germany during the 1930s. Undersecretary of State William Phillips was an ardent anti-Semite with considerable influence on immigration policy between 1933-1936 (Breitman & Kraut, 1987, p. 36). Throughout the period until the end of World War II attempts to foster Jewish immigration, even in the context of knowledge that the Nazis were persecuting Jews, were largely unsuccessful because of an unyielding Congress and the activities of bureaucrats, especially those in the State Department. Public discussion in periodicals such as The Nation (Nov. 19, 1938), and The New Republic (Nov. 23, 1938) charged that the restrictionism was motivated by anti-Semitism, while opponents of admitting large numbers of Jews argued that admission would result in an increase in anti-Semitism. Henry Pratt Fairchild (1939, p. 344), who was a restrictionist and was highly critical of the Jews (see Fairchild, 1947), emphasized the "powerful current of anti-foreignism and anti-Semitism that is running close to the surface of the American public mind, ready to burst out into violent eruption on relatively slight provocation." Public opinion remained steadfast against increasing the quotas for European refugees: a 1939 poll in Fortune (April, 1939) magazine showed that 83% answered "no" to the following question: "If you were a member of Congress would you vote yes or no on a bill to open the doors of the United States to a larger number of European refugees than now admitted under our immigration quotas?" Less than 9% replied "yes" and the remainder had no opinion.

Jewish Anti-Restrictionist Activity, 1946-1952.

Although Jewish interests were defeated by the 1924 legislation, "the discriminatory character of the Reed-Johnson Act continued to rankle all sectors of American Jewish opinion" (Neuringer, 1971, 196). During this period, an article by Will Maslow (1950) in Congress Weekly reiterated the belief that the restrictive immigration laws intentionally targeted Jews: "Only one type of law, immigration legislation which relates to aliens outside the country, is not subject to constitutional guarantees, and even here hostility toward Jewish immigration has had to be disguised in an elaborate quota scheme in which eligibility was based on place of birth rather than religion." The Jewish concern to alter the ethnic balance of the United States is apparent in the debates over immigration legislation during the post World War II era. In 1948 the AJCommittee submitted a statement to the Senate subcommittee which simultaneously denied the importance of the material interests of the United States as well as affirmed its commitment to immigration of all races:

Americanism is not to be measured by conformity to law, or zeal for education, or literacy, or any of these qualities in which immigrants may excel the native-born. Americanism is the spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to people of all races, all religions, all nationalities (in Cohen 1972, p. 369).

In 1945 Representative Emanuel Celler introduced a bill ending Chinese exclusion by establishing token quotas for Chinese, and in 1948 the AJCommittee condemned racial quotas on Asians (Divine, 1957, p. 155). On the other hand, Jewish groups had an attitude of indifference or even hostility toward immigration of non-Jews from Europe (including Southern Europe) in the post-World War II era (Neuringer, 1971, pp. 356, 367-369, 383). Thus Jewish spokesmen did not testify at all during the first set of hearings on emergency legislation which allowed immigration of a limited number of German, Italian, Greek, and Dutch immigrants, escapees from Communism, and a small number of Poles, Orientals, and Arabs. When Jewish spokesmen eventually testified (partly because a small number of the escapees from Communism were Jews), they took the opportunity to once again focus on their condemnation of the national origins provisions of the 1924 law.

Jewish involvement in opposing restrictions during this period was motivated partly by attempts to establish precedents in which the quota system was bypassed and partly by attempts to increase immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. The Citizen’s Committee on Displaced Persons, which advocated legislation to admit 400,000 refugees as nonquota immigrants over a period of 4 years, was funded mainly by the AJCommittee and other Jewish contributors (See Cong. Rec., October 15, 1949, pp. 14647-14654; Neuringer 1971, p. ii) and maintained a staff of 65 people. Witnesses opposing the legislation complained that the bill was an attempt to subvert the ethnic balance of the United States established by the 1924 legislation (Divine 1957, p. 117). In the event, the bill that was reported out of the subcommittee did not satisfy Jewish interests because it established a cut-off date that excluded Jews who had migrated from Eastern Europe after World War II, including Jews fleeing Polish anti-Semitism. The Senate subcommittee "regarded the movement of Jews and other refugees from eastern Europe after 1945 as falling outside the scope of the main problem and implied that this exodus was a planned migration organized by Jewish agencies in the United States and in Europe" (Senate Report No. 950 [1948], pp. 15-16).

Jewish representatives led the assault on the bill (Divine 1957, p. 127), Representative Emanuel Celler terming it as "worse than no bill at all. All it does is exclude . . . Jews" (in Neuringer, 1971, p. 298; see also Divine, 1957, p. 127). In reluctantly signing the bill, President Truman noted that the 1945 cutoff date "discriminates in callous fashion against displaced persons of the Jewish faith" (Interpreter Releases, 25 [July 21, 1948], pp. 252-254). On the other hand, Senator Chapman Revercomb stated that "there is no distinction, certainly no discrimination, intended between any persons because of their religion or their race, but there are differences drawn among those persons who are in fact displaced persons and have been in camp longest and have a preference" (Cong. Rec. May 26, 1948, p. 6793). In his analysis, Divine (1957, p. 143) concludes that

the expressed motive of the restrictionists, to limit the program to those people displaced during the course of the war, appears to be a valid explanation for these provisions. The tendency of Jewish groups to attribute the exclusion of many of their coreligionists to anti-Semitic bias is understandable; however, the extreme charges of discrimination made during the 1948 presidential campaign lead one to suspect that the northern wing of the Democratic party was using this issue to attract votes from members of minority groups. Certainly Truman’s assertion that the 1948 law was anti-Catholic, made in the face of Catholic denials, indicates that political expediency had a great deal to do with the emphasis on the discrimination issue.

In the aftermath of this bill, the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons released a report labeling the bill as characterized by "hate and racism" and Jewish organizations were unanimous in denouncing the law (Divine, 1957, p. 131). After the 1948 elections resulted in a Democratic Congress and a sympathetic President Truman, Representative Celler introduced a bill without the 1945 cutoff date, but the bill, after passing the House, failed in the Senate because of the opposition of Senator Pat McCarran. During the hearings, McCarran noted that the Citizens Committee had spent over $800,000 lobbying for a liberalized bill, with the result that "there has been disseminated over the length and breadth of this nation a campaign of misrepresentation and falsehood which has misled many public-spirited and well-meaning citizens and organizations" (Cong. Rec., April 26, 1949, pp. 5042-5043). After defeat, the Citizen’s Committee increased expenditures to over $1,000,000 and succeeded in passing a bill, introduced by Representative Celler, with a 1949 cutoff date that did not discriminate against Jews but largely excluded ethnic Germans who had been expelled from Eastern Europe. In an odd twist in the debate, restrictionists now accused the anti-restrictionists of ethnic bias (e.g., Senator Eastland, Cong. Rec. April 5, 1950, p. 2737; Senator McCarran, Cong. Rec. April 5, 1950, p. 4743).

At a time when there were no outbreaks of anti-Semitism in other parts of the world creating an urgent need for Jewish immigration and with the presence of Israel as a safe haven for Jews, Jewish organizations still vigorously objected to the continuation of the national origins provisions of the 1924 law in the McCarran-Walter law of 1952 (Neuringer 1971, p. 337ff). Indeed, when District Court of Appeals Judge Simon H. Rifkind testified on behalf of a wide range of Jewish organizations against the McCarran-Walter bill he noted emphatically that because of the international situation and particularly the existence of Israel as a safe haven for Jews, Jewish views on immigration legislation were not predicated on the "plight of our co-religionists but rather the impact which immigration and naturalization laws have upon the temper and quality of American life here in the United States."16 The argument was now typically couched in terms of "democratic principles and the cause of international amity" (Cohen 1972, p. 368)— the implicit theory being that the principles of democracy required ethnic diversity and the theory that the good will of other countries depended on American willingness to accept their citizens as immigrants. Rifkind noted that "(T)he enactment of [the McCarran-Walter bill] will gravely impair the national effort we are putting forth. For we are engaged in a war for the hearts and minds of men. The free nations of the world look to us for moral and spiritual reinforcement at a time when the faith which moves men is as important as the force they wield."17

The McCarran-Walter law explicitly included racial ancestry as a criterion in its provision that Orientals would be included in the token Oriental quotas no matter where they were born. Herbert Lehman, a senator from New York and the most prominent senatorial opponent of immigration restriction during the 1950s (Neuringer 1971, p. 351), argued during the debates over the McCarran-Walter bill that immigrants from Jamaica of African descent should be included in the quota for England and stated that the bill would cause resentment among Asians (Neuringer 1971, pp. 346, 356). Representative Emanuel Celler and Representative Jacob Javits, the leaders of the anti-restrictionists in the House, made similar arguments (Cong. Rec., April 23, 1952, pp. 4306, 4219). As was also apparent in the battles dating back to the nineteenth century (see above), the opposition to the national origins legislation went beyond its effects on Jewish immigration to include advocacy of immigration into the United States of all of the racial/ethnic groups of the world.

Reflecting a concern for maintaining the ethnic status quo as well as the salience of Jewish issues during the period, the hearings of the subcommittee considering the McCarran immigration law noted that "The population of the United States has increased three-fold since 1877, while the Jewish population has increased twenty-one fold during the same period" (Senate Report No. 1515 [1950], pp. 2-4). The bill also included a provision that naturalized citizens automatically lost citizenship if they resided abroad continuously for 5 years. This provision was viewed by Jewish organizations as motivated by anti-Zionist attitudes: "Testimony by Government officials at the hearings . . . made it clear that the provision stemmed from a desire to dissuade naturalized American Jews from subscribing to a deeply held ideal which some officials in contravention of American policy regarded as undesirable . . . ."18

Reaffirming the logic of the 1920s restrictionists, the subcommittee report emphasized that a purpose of the 1924 law was "the restriction of immigration from southern and eastern Europe in order to preserve a predominance of persons of northwestern European origin in the composition of our total population" but noted that this purpose did not imply "any theory of Nordic supremacy" (Senate Report, No. 1515, [1950], pp. 442, 445-446). The argument was sometimes phrased in terms of an emphasis on the "similarity of cultural background" of prospective immigrants, but again the underlying logic was that ethnic groups already in the country had legitimate interests in maintaining the ethnic status quo.

It is important to note that Jewish spokesmen differed from other liberal groups in their motives for opposing restrictions on immigration during this period. In the following I emphasize the Congressional testimony of Judge Simon H. Rifkind who represented a very broad range of Jewish agencies in the hearings on the McCarran-Walter bill in 1951.19

1.) Immigration should come from all racial/ethnic groups: We conceive of Americanism as the spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to people of different races, all religions, all nationalities. Americanism is a tolerant way of life that was devised by men who differed from one another vastly in religion, race background, education, and lineage, and who agreed to forget all these things and ask of a new neighbor not where he comes from but only what he can do and what is his spirit toward his fellow men (p. 566).

2.) The total number of immigrants should be maximized within very broad economic and political constraints: "(T)he regulation [of immigration] is the regulation of an asset, not of a liability" (p. 567). Rifkind emphasized several times that unused quotas had the effect of restricting total numbers of immigrants, and he viewed this very negatively (e.g., p. 569).

3.) Immigrants should not be viewed as economic assets and imported only to serve the present needs of the United States:

Looking at [selective immigration] from the point of view of the United States, never from the point of view of the immigrant, I say that we should, to some extent, allow for our temporary needs, but not to make our immigration problem an employment instrumentality. I do not think that we are buying economic commodities when we allow immigrants to come in. We are admitting human beings who will found families and raise children, whose children may reach the heights— at least so we hope and pray. For a small segment of the immigrant stream I think we are entitled to say, if we happen to be short of a particular talent, "Let us go out and look for them," if necessary, but let us not make that the all-pervading thought. (p. 570)

The opposition to needed skills as the basis of immigration was consistent with the prolonged Jewish attempt to delay the passage of a literacy test as a criterion for immigration beginning in the late nineteenth century until a literacy test was finally passed in 1917.

While Rifkind’s testimony was free of the accusation that present immigration policy was based on the theory of Nordic superiority, Nordic superiority continued to be a prominent theme of other Jewish groups advocating immigration from all ethnic groups, particularly the AJCongress. The statement of the AJCongress at these hearings focused a great deal of attention on the importance of the theory of Nordic supremacy as motivating the 1924 legislation, but also noted the previous history of ethnic discrimination that existed long before these theories were developed, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the gentlemen’s agreement with Japan of 1907 which limited immigration of Japanese workers, and the exclusion of other Asians in 1917. The statement noted that the 1924 legislation had succeeded in its aim of preserving the ethnic balance of the U.S. as of the 1920 census.

However, it noted that "the objective is valueless. There is nothing sacrosanct about the composition of the population in 1920. It would be foolish to believe that we reached the peak of ethnic perfection in that year."20 Moreover, in an explicit statement of Horace Kallen’s multicultural ideal, the AJCongress statement advocated "the thesis of cultural democracy which would guarantee to all groups ‘majority and minority alike . . . the right to be different and the responsibility to make sure that their differences do not conflict with the welfare of the American people as a whole.’"21

During this period, the Congress Weekly, the journal of the AJCongress, regularly denounced the national origins provisions as based on the "myth of the existence of superior and inferior racial stocks" (Oct. 17, 1955; p. 3) and advocated immigration on the basis of "need and other criteria unrelated to race or national origin" (May 4, 1953, p. 3). Particularly objectionable from the perspective of the AJCongress was the implication that there should be no change in the ethnic status quo prescribed by the 1924 legislation (e.g., Goldstein, 1952a, p. 6). The national origins formula "is outrageous now . . . when our national experience has confirmed beyond a doubt that our very strength lies in the diversity of our peoples" (Goldstein, 1952b, p. 5).

As indicated above, there is some evidence that the 1924 legislation and the restrictionism of the 1930s was motivated partly by anti-Semitic attitudes. Anti-Semitism and its linkage with anti-Communism was also apparent in the immigration arguments during the 1950s preceding and following the passage of the McCarran-Walter act. Restrictionists often pointed to evidence that over 90% of American Communists had backgrounds linking them to Eastern Europe and a major thrust of their efforts was to prevent immigration from this area and to ease deportation procedures to prevent Communist subversion. Since Eastern Europe was also the origin of most Jewish immigration and because Jews were disproportionately represented among American Communists, these issues became linked and the situation lent itself to broad anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the role of Jews in American politics (e.g., Beaty, 1951). In Congress, the notorious anti-Semite Representative John Rankin, without making explicit reference to Jews, stated that

They whine about discrimination. Do you know who is being discriminated against? The white Christian people of America, the ones who created this nation. . . . I am talking about the white Christian people of the North as well as the South. . . .

Communism is racial. A racial minority seized control in Russia and in all her satellite countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and many other countries I could name.

They have been run out of practically every country in Europe in the years gone by, and if they keep stirring race trouble in this country and trying to force their communistic program on the Christian people of America, there is no telling what will happen to them here" (Cong. Rec., April 23, 1952, p. 4320).

Reinforcing these links, the position of mainstream Jewish organizations such as the AJCommittee, which opposed communism, often coincided with the position of the CPUSA on issues of immigration. For example, both the AJCommittee and the CPUSA condemned the McCarran-Walter act while, on the other hand, the AJCommittee had a major role in influencing the recommendations of President Truman’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization (PCIN) for relaxing the security provisions of the McCarran-Walter act, and these recommendations were warmly greeted by the CPUSA at a time when a prime goal of the security provisions was to exclude communists (Bennett, 1963, p. 166). Jews were disproportionately represented on the PCIN as well as in the organizations viewed by Congress as Communist front organizations involved in immigration issues, and this was undoubtedly highly salient to anti-Semites. The Chairman of the PCIN was Philip B. Perlman and the staff of the commission contained a high percentage of Jews, headed by Harry N. Rosenfield (Executive Director) and Elliot Shirk (Assistant to the Executive Director), and its report was wholeheartedly endorsed by the AJCongress (see Congress Weekly, Jan. 12, 1952, p. 3). The proceedings were printed as the report Whom We Shall Welcome with the cooperation of Representative Emanuel Celler.

In Congress, Senator McCarran accused the PCIN of containing communist sympathizers, and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) released a report stating that "some two dozen Communists and many times that number with records of repeated affiliation with known Communist enterprises testified before the Commission or submitted statements for inclusion in the record of the hearings. . . . Nowhere in either the record of the hearings or in the report is there a single reference to the true background of these persons" (House Report No. 1182, 85th Congress, 1st Session, p. 47). The report referred particularly to Communists associated with the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born (ACPFB) headed by Abner Green. Green, who was Jewish, figured very prominently in these hearings, and Jews were generally disproportionately represented among those singled out as officers and sponsors of the ACPFB (pp. 13-21). HUAC provided evidence that ACPFB had close ties with the CPUSA and noted that 24 of the individuals associated with the ACPFB had signed statements incorporated into the printed record of the PCIN.

The AJCommittee was also heavily involved in the deliberations of the PCIN, including providing testimony and distributing data and other material to individuals and organizations testifying before the PCIN (Cohen, 1972, p. 371). All of its recommendations were incorporated into the final report (Cohen, 1972, p. 371) (including a de-emphasis on economic skills as criteria for immigration, scrapping the national origins legislation, and opening immigration to all the peoples of the world on a "first come, first served basis"), the only exception being that the report recommended a lower total number of immigrants than recommended by the AJCommittee and other Jewish groups. The AJCommittee thus went beyond merely advocating the principle of immigration from all racial/ethnic groups (token quotas for Asians and Africans had already been included in the McCarran-Walter act) to attempt to maximize the total number of immigrants from all parts of the world within the current political climate.

Indeed, the Commission (PCIN, 1953, p. 106) pointedly noted that the 1924 legislation had succeeded in maintaining the racial status quo and that the main barrier to changing the racial status quo was not the national origins system (because there were already high levels of non-quota immigrants and because the countries of Northern and Western Europe did not fill their quotas) but the total number of immigrants allowed into the United States. The Commission thus viewed changing the racial status quo of the United States as a desirable goal, and to that end made a major point of the desirability of increasing the total amount of immigration (PCIN, 1953, p. 42). As Bennett (1963, p. 164) notes, in the eyes of the PCIN, the 1924 legislation reducing the total number of immigrants "was a very bad thing because of its finding that one race is just as good as another for American citizenship or any other purpose."

Correspondingly, the defenders of the 1952 legislation conceptualized the issue as fundamentally one of ethnic warfare. Senator McCarran stated that subverting the national origins system "would, in the course of a generation or so, tend to change the ethnic and cultural composition of this nation" (in Bennett, 1963, p. 185), and Richard Arens, a Congressional staff member who had a prominent role in the hearings on the McCarran-Walter bill as well as in the activities of the HUAC, stated that "these are the critics who do not like America as it is and has been. They think our people exist in unfair ethnic proportions. They prefer that we bear a greater resemblance or ethnic relationship to the foreign peoples whom they favor and for whom they are seeking disproportionately greater immigration privileges" (in Bennett, 1963, 186). As Divine (1957, p. 188) notes, ethnic interests predominated on both sides; the charges of racism made against the restrictionists who were advocating the ethnic status quo were balanced against the attempts by anti-restrictionists to alter the ethnic status quo in a manner that conformed to their own perceived ethnic interests.

The salience of Jewish involvement in immigration during this period is also apparent in several other incidents. In 1950 the representative of the AJCongress testified that the retention of national origins in any form would be "a political and moral catastrophe" ("Revision of Immigration Laws" Joint Hearings, 1950, pp. 336-337). The national origins formula implies that "persons in quest of the opportunity to live in this land are to be judged according to breed like cattle at a country fair and not on the basis of their character fitness or capacity" (Congress Weekly 21, 1952, pp. 3-4). Divine (1957, p. 173) characterizes the AJCongress as representing "the more militant wing" of the opposition because of its principled opposition to any form of the national origins formula, whereas other opponents merely wanted to be able to distribute unused quotas to Southern and Eastern Europe.

Representative Francis Walter noted the "propaganda drive that is being engaged in now by certain members of the American Jewish Congress opposed to the Immigration and Nationality Code" (Cong. Rec. Mar, 13, 1952, p. 2283), noting particularly the activities of Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the AJCongress, who had been reported in the New York Times as having stated that the Immigration and Nationality law would place "a legislative seal of inferiority on all persons of other than Anglo-Saxon origin." Representative Walter then noted the special role that Jewish organizations had played in attempting to foster family reunion rather than special skills as the basis of United States immigration policy. After Representative Jacob Javits stated that opposition to the law was "not confined to the one group the gentleman mentioned" (Congressional Record, March 13, 1952, p. 2284), Walter responded as follows:

I might call your attention to the fact that Mr. Harry N. Rosenfield, Commissioner of the Displaced Persons Commission and incidentally a brother-in-law of a lawyer who is stirring up all this agitation, in a speech recently said:

The proposed legislation is America’s Nuremberg trial. It is "racious" and archaic, based on a theory that people with different styles of noses should be treated differently.

Representative Walter then went on to note that during the hearings on the bill, the only two organizations that were hostile to the entire bill were the AJCongress and the Association of Immigration and Nationality Lawyers, the latter "represented by an attorney who is also advising and counseling the American Jewish Congress." (Indeed, Goldstein [1952b] himself noted that "at the time of the Joint House-Senate hearings on the McCarran bill, the American Jewish Congress was the only civic group which dared flatly to oppose the national origins quota formula.")

Representative Emanuel Celler then stated that Walter "should not have overemphasized as he did the people of one particular faith who are opposing the bill" (p. 2285). Representative Walter agreed with Celler’s comments, noting that "there are other very fine Jewish groups who endorse the bill." Nevertheless, the principle Jewish organizations, including the AJCongress, the AJCommittee, the ADL, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, did indeed oppose the bill (Cong. Rec., April 23, 1952, p. 4247), and when Judge Simon Rifkind testified against the bill in the Joint Hearings, he emphasized that he represented a very wide range of Jewish groups, "the entire body of religious opinion and lay opinion within the Jewish group, religiously speaking, from the extreme right and extreme left" (p. 563).22 Rifkind represented a long list of national and local Jewish groups, including in addition to the above, the Synagogue Council of America, the Jewish Labor Committee, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, and 27 local Jewish councils throughout the United States. Moreover, the fight against the bill was led by Jewish members of Congress, including especially Celler, Javits, and Lehman, all of whom, as indicated above, were prominent members of the ADL.

Albeit by indirection, Representative Walter was clearly calling attention to the special Jewish role in the immigration conflict of 1952. The special role of the AJCongress in opposing the McCarran-Walter act was a source of pride within the group: on the verge of victory in 1965, the Congress bi-Weekly editorialized that it was "a cause of pride" that Rabbi Israel Goldstein had been "singled out by Rep. Walter for attack on the floor of the House of Representatives as the prime organizer of the campaign against the measures he co-sponsored" (Feb. 1, 1965; p. 3).

The perception that Jewish concerns were an important feature of the opposition to the McCarran-Walter act can also be seen in the following exchange between Representative Celler and Representative Walter. Celler noted that "The national origin theory upon which our immigration law is based . . . [mocks] our protestations based on a question of equality of opportunity for all peoples, regardless of race, color, or creed." Representative Walter replied that "a great menace to America lies in the fact that so many professionals, including professional Jews, are shedding crocodile tears for no reason whatsoever" (Cong. Rec. Jan. 13, 1953, p. 372). And in a comment referring to the peculiarities of Jewish interests in immigration legislation, Richard Arens, Staff Director of the Senate subcommittee that produced the McCarran-Walter act, pointedly noted that "one of the curious things about those who most loudly claim that the 1952 act is ‘discriminatory’ and that it does not make allowance for a sufficient number of alleged refugees, is that they oppose admission of any of the approximately one million Arab refugees in camps where they are living in pitiful circumstances after having been driven out of Israel" (in Bennett, 1963, p. 181).

The McCarran-Walter Act was passed over President Truman’s veto, and Truman’s "alleged partisanship to Jews was a favorite target of anti-Semites" (Cohen, 1972, p. 377). Prior to the veto, Truman was intensively lobbied, "particularly [by] Jewish societies" opposed to the bill, while government agencies, including the State Department urged Truman to sign the bill (Divine, 1957, p. 184). Moreover, individuals with openly anti-Semitic attitudes, such as John Beaty (1951), often focused on Jewish involvement in the immigration battles during this period.

Jewish Anti-Restrictionist Activity, 1953-1965.

During this period, the Congress Weekly regularly noted the role of Jewish organizations as the vanguard of liberalized immigration laws: For example, in its editorial of Feb. 20, 1956 (p. 3), it congratulated President Eisenhower for his "unequivocal opposition to the quota system which, more than any other feature of our immigration policy, has excited the most widespread and most intense aversion among Americans. In advancing this proposal for ‘new guidelines and standards’ in determining admissions, President Eisenhower has courageously taken a stand in advance of even many advocates of a liberal immigration policy and embraced a position which had at first been urged by the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish agencies."

The AJCommittee made a major effort to keep the immigration issue alive during a period of widespread apathy among the American public between the passage of the McCarran-Walter act and the early 1960s. Jewish organizations intensified their effort during this period (Cohen, 1972, pp. 370-373; Neuringer, 1971, p. 358), with the AJCommittee helping to establish the Joint Conference on Alien Legislation and the American Immigration Conference (organizations representing pro-immigration forces) as well as providing most of the funding and performing most of the work of these groups. In 1955 the AJCommittee organized a group of influential citizens as the National Commission on Immigration and Citizenship "in order to give prestige to the campaign" (Cohen, 1972, p. 373). "All these groups studied immigration laws, disseminated information to the public, presented testimony to Congress, and planned other appropriate activities. . . . There were no immediate or dramatic results; but AJC’s dogged campaign in conjunction with like-minded organizations ultimately prodded the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to action" (Cohen, 1972, p. 373).

An article by Oscar Handlin (1952), the prominent Harvard historian of immigration, is a fascinating microcosm of the Jewish approach to immigration during this period. Writing in Commentary (a publication of the AJCommittee) almost 30 years after the 1924 defeat and in the immediate aftermath of the McCarran-Walter act, Handlin entitled his article "The immigration fight has only begun: Lessons of the McCarran-Walter setback." The title is a remarkable indication of the tenacity and persistence of Jewish commitment to this issue. The message is to not be discouraged by the recent defeat which occurred despite "all the effort toward securing the revision of our immigration laws" (p. 2).

Handlin attempts to cast the argument in universalist terms as benefiting all Americans and as conforming to American ideals that "all men, being brothers, are equally capable of being Americans" (p.7). Current immigration law reflects "racist xenophobia" (p. 2) by its token quotas for Asians and its deprivation of the right of West Indian Blacks to take advantage of British quotas. Handlin ascribes the restrictionist sentiments of Pat McCarran to "the hatred of foreigners that was all about him in his youth and by the dim, recalled fear that he himself might be counted among them" (p. 3)— a sort of psychoanalytic identification-with-the-aggressor argument (McCarran was Catholic).

In his article Handlin repeatedly uses the term "we" (as in "(i)f we cannot beat McCarran and his cohorts with their own weapons, we can do much to destroy the efficacy of those weapons (p. 4)," suggesting Handlin’s belief in a unified Jewish interest in liberal immigration policy and presaging a prolonged "chipping away" of the 1952 legislation in the ensuing years. Handlin’s anti-restrictionist strategy included altering the views of social scientists to the effect "that it was possible and necessary to distinguish among the ‘races’ of immigrants that clamored for admission to the United States" (p. 4). Handlin’s proposal to recruit social scientists in the immigration battles is congruent with the political agenda of the Boasian school of anthropology discussed above. And as Higham (1984) notes, the ascendancy of such views was an important component of the ultimate victory over restrictionism.

In an arguably tendentious rendering of the logic of preserving the ethnic status quo that underlay the arguments for restriction in the period from 1921-1952, Handlin stated:

The laws are bad because they rest on the racist assumption that mankind is divided into fixed breeds, biologically and culturally separated from each other, and because, within that framework, they assume that Americans are Anglo-Saxons by origin and ought to remain so. To all other peoples, the laws say that the United States ranks them in terms of their racial proximity to our own ‘superior’ stock; and upon the many, many millions of Americans not descended from the Anglo-Saxons, the laws cast a distinct imputation of inferiority (p. 5).

Handlin then deplored the apathy of other "hyphenated Americans" to share the enthusiasm of the Jewish effort: "Many groups failed to see the relevance of the McCarran-Walter Bill to their own position;" he suggested that they ought to act as groups to assert their rightful interests: "The Italian American has the right to be heard on these issues precisely as an Italian American" (p. 7; italics in text). The implicit assumption is that America ought to be composed of cohesive subgroups with a clear sense of their group interests in opposition to the peoples deriving from Northern and Western Europe or of the United States as a whole. And there is the implication that Italian-Americans have an interest in furthering immigration of Africans and Asians and in creating such a multiracial and multicultural society.

Shortly after Handlin’s article, William Petersen (1955), also writing in Commentary, argued that pro-immigration forces should be explicit in their advocacy of a multicultural society, and that the importance of this goal transcended the importance of achieving any self-interested goal of the United States, such as obtaining needed skills or improving foreign relations. In making his case he cited a group of predominantly Jewish social scientists whose works, beginning with Horace Kallen’s plea for a multicultural, pluralistic society, "constitute the beginning of a scholarly legitimization of the different immigration policy that will perhaps one day become law" (p. 86), including, besides Kallen, Melville Herskovits, Geoffrey Gorer, Samuel Lubell, David Riesman, Thorsten Sellin, and Milton Konvitz. These social scientists did indeed contribute to the immigration battles. For example, the following quotation from a scholarly book on immigration policy by Milton Konvitz of Cornell University reflects the rejection of national interest as an element of United States immigration policy— a hallmark of the Jewish approach to immigration:

To place so much emphasis on technological and vocational qualifications is to remove every vestige of humanitarianism from our immigration policy. We deserve small thanks from those who come here if they are admitted because we find that they are "urgently" needed, by reason of their training and experience, to advance our national interests. This is hardly immigration; it is the importation of special skills or know-how, not greatly different from the importation of coffee or rubber. It is hardly in the spirit of American ideals to disregard a man’s character and promise and to look only at his education and the vocational opportunities he had the good fortune to enjoy (Konvitz, 1953, p.26).

Handlin wrote that the McCarran-Walter law was only a temporary setback and he was right. Thirty years after the triumph of restrictionism, only Jewish groups remained as persistent and tenacious advocates of a multicultural America. Forty-one years after the 1924 triumph of restrictionism and the national origins provision and only 13 years after its reaffirmation with the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, Jewish organizations successfully supported ending the geographically based national origins basis of immigration intended to result in an ethnic status quo in what was now a radically altered intellectual and political climate.

Particularly important is the provision in the Immigration Act of 1965 that expanded the number of non-quota immigrants. Beginning in their testimony on the 1924 law, Jewish spokesmen had been in the forefront in attempts to admit family members on a nonquota basis (Neuringer, 1971, p. 191). During the House debates on immigration surrounding the McCarran-Walter Act, Representative Walter (Cong. Rec., p. 2284, March 13, 1952) noted the special focus that Jewish organizations had on family reunion rather than on special skills. Responding to Representative Javits who had complained that under the bill 50% of the quota for "Negroes" from the British West Indies colonies would be reserved for people with special skills, Walter noted that "I would like to call the gentleman’s attention to the fact that this is the principle of using 50 percent of the quota for people needed in the United States. But, if that entire 50 percent is not used in that category, then the unused numbers go down to the next category which replies to the objections that these Jewish organizations make much of, that families are being separated."

Prior to the 1965 law, Bennett (1963, p. 244), commenting on the family unification aspects of the 1961 immigration legislation, noted that the "relationship by blood or marriage and the principle of uniting families have become the ‘open Sesame’ to the immigration gates." Moreover, despite repeated denials by the anti-restrictionists that their proposals would affect the ethnic balance of the country, Bennett (1963, p. 256) commented that the "repeated, persistent extension of nonquota status to immigrants from countries with oversubscribed quotas and flatly discriminated against by [the McCarran-Walter act] together with administrative waivers of inadmissibility, adjustment of status and private bills, is helping to speed and make apparently inevitable a change in the ethnic face of the nation" (p. 257)— a reference to the "chipping away" of the 1952 law recommended as a strategy in Handlin’s article. Indeed, a major argument apparent in the debate over the 1965 legislation was that the 1952 law had been so weakened that it had largely become irrelevant and there was a need to overhaul immigration legislation to legitimize a de facto situation.

Bennett also noted that "(t)he stress on the immigration issue arises from insistence of those who regard quotas as ceilings, not floors [opponents of restriction often referred to unused quotas as "wasted"], who want to remake America in the image of small-quota countries and who do not like our basic ideology, cultural attitudes and heritage. They insist that it is the duty of the United States to accept immigrants irrespective of their assimilability or our own population problems. They insist on remaining hyphenated Americans" (1963, p. 295).

The family-based emphasis of the quota regulations of the 1965 law (e.g., the provision that at least 24% of the quota for each area be set aside for brothers and sisters of citizens) has resulted in a multiplier effect which ultimately subverted the quota system entirely by allowing for a "chaining" phenomenon in which endless chains of the close relatives of close relatives are admitted outside the quota system:

Imagine one immigrant, say an engineering student, who was studying in the U. S. during the 1960’s. If he found a job after graduation, he could then bring over his wife [as the spouse of a resident alien], and six years later, after being naturalized, his bothers and sisters [as siblings of a citizen]. They, in turn, could bring their wives, husbands, and children. Within a dozen years, one immigrant entering as a skilled worker could easily generate 25 visas for in-laws, nieces, and nephews (McConnell 1988, p. 98).

The 1965 law also de-emphasized the criterion that immigrants should have needed skills. (In 1986, less than 4% of immigrants were admitted on the basis of needed skills, while 74% were admitted on the basis of kinship [see Brimelow, 1995].) As indicated above, the rejection of a skill requirement or other tests of competence in favor of "humanitarian goals" and family unification had been an element of Jewish immigration policy at least since debate on the McCarran-Walter act of the early 1950s and extending really to the long opposition to literacy tests dating from the end of the nineteenth century.

Senator Jacob Javits played a prominent role in the Senate hearings on the 1965 bill, and Emanuel Celler, who fought for unrestricted immigration for over 40 years in the House of Representatives, introduced similar legislation in that body. Jewish organizations (American Council for Judaism Philanthropic Fund; Council of Jewish Federations & Welfare Funds; B’nai B’rith Women) filed briefs in support of the measure before the Senate Subcommittee, as did organizations such as the ACLU and the Americans for Democratic Action with a large Jewish membership.

Indeed, it is noteworthy that well before the ultimate triumph of the Jewish policy on immigration, Javits (1951) authored an article entitled "Let’s open the gates" that proposed immigration level of 500,000 per year for 20 years with no restrictions on national origin. In 1961 Javits proposed a bill that "sought to destroy the [national origins quota system] by a flank attack and to increase quota and nonquota immigration" (Bennett, 1963, p. 250). In addition to provisions aimed at removing barriers due to race, ethnic and national origins, included in this bill was a provision that brothers, sisters, and married sons or daughters of United States citizens and their spouses and children who had become eligible under the quota system in legislation of 1957 be included as nonquota immigrants— an even more radical version of the provision whose incorporation in the 1965 law facilitated non-European immigration into the United States. Although this provision of Javit’s bill was not approved at the time, the bill’s proposals for softening previous restrictions on Asian and Black immigration as well as removing racial classification from visa documents (thus allowing unlimited nonquota immigration of Asians born in the Western Hemisphere) were approved.

It is also interesting that the main victory of the restrictionists in 1965 was that Western Hemisphere nations were included in the new quota system thus ending the possibility of unrestricted immigration from those regions. In speeches before the Senate, Senator Javits (Cong. Rec. 111, 1965, p. 24469) bitterly opposed this extension of the quota system, arguing that placing any limits on immigration of all of the people of the Western Hemisphere would have severely negative implications on United States foreign policy. In a highly revealing discussion of the bill before the Senate, Senator Sam Ervin (Cong. Rec. 89th Congress, 1st session, pp. 24446-51, 1965) noted that "those who disagree with me express no shock that Britain, in the future, can send us 10,000 fewer immigrants than she has sent on an annual average in the past. They are only shocked that British Guyana cannot send us every single citizen of that country who wishes to come." Clearly the forces of liberal immigration really wanted unlimited immigration into the United States.

The pro-immigrationists also failed to prevent a requirement that the Secretary of Labor determine that there are insufficient Americans able and willing to perform the labor which the aliens intend to perform, and that the employment of such aliens will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers. Writing in the American Jewish Year Book, Liskofsky (1966, 174) notes that pro-immigration groups opposed these regulations but agreed to them in order to get a bill that ended the national origins provisions. After passage "they became intensely concerned. They voiced publicly the fear that the new, administratively cumbersome procedure might easily result in paralyzing most immigration of skilled and unskilled workers as well as of non-preference immigrants." Reflecting the long Jewish opposition to the idea that immigration policy should be in the national interest, the economic welfare of American citizens was irrelevant; securing high levels of immigration had become an end in itself.

The 1965 law is having the effect that it seems reasonable to suppose had been intended by its Jewish advocates all along: the Census Bureau projects that by the year 2050, European-derived peoples will no longer be a majority of the population of America. Moreover, multiculturalism has already become a powerful ideological and political reality (Brimelow, 1995). Although the proponents of the 1965 legislation continued to insist that the bill would not affect the ethnic balance of the United States or even impact its culture, it is difficult to believe that at least some of the proponents were unaware of the eventual implications. Opponents, certainly, were quite clear that it would indeed affect the ethnic balance of the United States.

Given the intense involvement of organizations such as the AJCommittee in the details of immigration legislation and their very negative attitudes toward the North-Western European bias of pre-1965 United States immigration policy and very negative attitudes toward the idea of an ethnic status quo embodied, e.g., in the PCIN document Whom We Shall Welcome, it appears unlikely to suppose that these organizations were unaware of the inaccuracy of the projections of the effects of this legislation that were made by its supporters. Given the clearly articulated interests in ending the ethnic status quo evident in the arguments of anti-restrictionists throughout the period from 1924-1965, the 1965 law would not have been perceived by its proponents as a victory unless they viewed it as ultimately changing the ethnic status quo.

Revealingly, the 1965 law was viewed as a victory by the anti-restrictionists, and it is noteworthy that after regularly condemning United States immigration law and championing the eradication of the national origins formula precisely because it had produced an ethnic status quo, The Congress bi-Weekly completely ceased publishing articles on this topic. Moreover, Lawrence Auster (1990, p. 31ff) shows that the supporters of the legislation repeatedly glossed over the distinction between quota and non-quota immigration and failed to mention the effect that the legislation would have on non-quota immigration. Projections of the number of new immigrants failed to take account of the well-known and often commented-upon fact that the old quotas favoring Western European countries were not being filled. Moreover, continuing a tradition of over 40 years, the rhetoric of those in favor of the bill presented the legislation of 1924 and 1952 as based on theories of racial superiority and as involving racial discrimination rather than in terms of an attempt to create an ethnic status quo.

Even in 1952, Senator McCarran was well aware of the high stakes at risk in immigration policy:

"I believe that this nation is the last hope of Western civilization and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished. I take no issue with those who would praise the contributions which have been made to our society by people of many races, of varied creeds and colors. America is indeed a joining together of many streams which go to form a mighty river which we call the American way. However, we have in the United States today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of Europe and Asia will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States. . . . I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation’s downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation" (Senator Pat McCarran, Cong. Rec., March 2, 1953, p. 1518.)

CONCLUSION

The defeats of 1924 and 1952 did not prevent the ultimate victory of the Jewish interest in combating the cultural, political, and demographic dominance of the European-derived peoples of the United States. What is truly remarkable is the tenacity with which Jewish ethnic interests were pursued for a period of close to 100 years. Also remarkable was the ability to frame the argument of immigration-restrictionists in terms of racial superiority in the period from 1924-1965 rather than in such positive terms as the ethnic interests of the peoples of northern and western Europe in maintaining a status quo as of 1924.

During the period between 1924 and 1965 Jewish interests were largely thwarted, but this did not prevent the ultimate triumph of the Jewish perspective on immigration. In a very real sense the result of the immigration changes fostered by Jewish intellectual and political activity have constituted a long term victory over the political, demographic, and cultural representation of "the common people of the South and West" (Higham 1984, 49) whose congressional delegates were in the forefront of the restrictionist forces. Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb (1995) notes that it is the descendants of those WASPS who settled the West and South who "by and large did the most to lay out the infrastructure of this country, quite often suffering educational and professional regression as they tamed the wilderness, built the towns, roads and schools, and initiated a democratic way of life that later white cultures were able to take advantage of without paying the price of pioneering. Today they have the least, socioeconomically, to show for these contributions. And if one would care to check a map, they are from the areas now evincing the greatest resistance to government practices." Webb’s ideas are not new but reflect the sentiments a great many congressmen voiced during the immigration debates of the 1920’s.

It is instructive to consider the possible long term effects of this sea change in American immigration policy combined with the current emphasis on multi-culturalism. The shift to multiculturalism has coincided with an enormous growth of immigration from non-European-derived peoples beginning with the Immigration Act of 1965 which favored immigrants from non-European countries. Many of these immigrants come from non-Western countries where cultural, gender, and genetic segregation are the norm. Within the context of multicultural America, they are encouraged to retain their own languages and religions and encouraged to marry within the group. The movement toward ethnic separatism is highly problematic. Historically, ethnic separatism has been an extremely divisive force within societies. At the present time there are ethnically based conflicts on every continent, and formerly multi-ethnic societies are breaking away and establishing ethno-states based on ethnic homogeneity (Tullberg & Tullberg, 1997). These results confirm the expectation that indeed ethnicity is important in human affairs. People appear to be extremely aware of group membership, and ethnicity remains a common source of group identity. Individuals are also keenly aware of the relative standing of their own group in terms of resource control and social status. And they are willing to take extraordinary steps in order to achieve and retain economic and political power in defense of these group imperatives.

It is instructive to think of the circumstances which could minimize group conflict given the assumption of ethnic separatism. Theorists of cultural pluralism, such as Horace Kallen, envision the possibility that different ethnic groups would retain their distinctive identity in the context of complete political equality and economic opportunity. The difficulty with this scenario is that no provision is made for the results of competition for resources within the society.

In the best of circumstances one might suppose that the separated ethnic groups would engage in absolute reciprocity with each other, so that there would be no differences in terms of any measure of success in the society, including social class membership, economic role (e.g., producer versus consumer; creditor versus debtor; manager versus worker), or fertility between the separated ethnic groups. All groups would have approximately equal numbers and equal political power, or if there were different numbers there would be provisions ensuring that minorities could retain equitable representation in terms of the markers of success. Such conditions would minimize hostility between the groups because it would be difficult to attribute one’s status to the actions of the other group.

However, given the existence of ethnic separatism, it would still be in the interests of each group to advance its own interests at the expense of the other groups. All things being equal, a given ethnic group would be better off if it ensured that the other group had fewer resources, a lower social status, lower fertility, and proportionately less political power than itself. (Indeed, lowering the political and demographic power of the European-derived peoples of the United States has clearly been the aim of the Jewish political and intellectual activities discussed here.) The hypothesized steady state of equality therefore implies a set of balance of power relationships— each side constantly checking to make sure that the other is not cheating; each side constantly looking for ways to obtain dominance and exploitation by any possible means; each side willing to compromise only because of the threat of retaliation by the other side; each side willing to cooperate in a manner which involves a cost only if forced to do so by, e.g., the presence of external threat. Clearly any type of cooperation which would involve true altruism toward the other group would not be expected.

Thus the ideal situation of absolute equality would certainly require a great deal of monitoring and undoubtedly be characterized by a great deal of mutual suspicion. However, in the real world even this rather grim ideal is highly unlikely. In the real world, ethnic groups differ in their talents and abilities; they differ in their numbers, fertility, and the extent to which they encourage parenting practices conducive to resource acquisition; and they differ in the resources held at any point in time and in their political power. Equality or proportionate equity would be extremely difficult to attain, or to maintain after it has been achieved, without extraordinary levels of monitoring and without extremely intense social controls which would enforce ethnic quotas on the accumulation of wealth, admission to universities, obtaining high status jobs, etc.

Because of differing talents and abilities and differing parenting styles between ethnic groups, there would be a need to have different criteria for qualifying and retaining jobs depending on ethnic group membership.23 In the real world, therefore, there would have to be extraordinary efforts made to attain this steady state of ethnic balance of power and resources. It is of great interest that the ideology of Jewish-gentile co-existence has sometimes included the idea that the different ethnic groups develop a similar occupational profile and (implicitly) control resources in proportion to their numbers. The dream of the German assimilationists during the nineteenth-century was that the occupational profile of the Jews after emancipation would be highly similar to that of the gentiles— a "utopian expectation . . . shared by many, Jews and non-Jews alike" (Katz, 1986, p. 67). Efforts were made to decrease the percentage of Jews involved in trade and increase the percentages involved in agriculture and artisanry. In the event, however, the result of emancipation was that Jews were vastly overrepresented among the economic and cultural elite of the society, and this overrepresentation was a critical feature of German anti-Semitism from 1870-1933.

Similarly, during the 1920s plans were proposed in which each ethnic group received a percentage of placements at Harvard and other universities reflecting the percentage of racial and national groups in the United States. These plans certainly reflect the importance of ethnicity in human affairs, but surely a society based on this type of ethnic special interest is not one which a social engineer in the manner of Lycurgus, Moses, Plato, or the American Founding Fathers would design as a blueprint for an entire society. The levels of social tension are bound to be chronically high. Moreover, there is a considerable chance that ethnic warfare would occur even if precise parity had been achieved via intensive social controls: as indicated above, it would always be in the interests of any ethnic group to obtain hegemony over the others.

If one adopts a cultural pluralism model in which there is free competition for resources and reproductive success, differences between ethnic groups are inevitable, and history suggests that such differences would result in animosity from the groups that are losing out. The Tutsi/Hutu struggle in Rwanda and its neighbors is only the latest of many tragic examples. Assuming that there are ethnic differences in talents and abilities, the supposition that ethnic separatism could be a stable situation without ethnic animosity requires either a balance of power situation maintained with powerful social controls, as described above, or it requires that at least some ethnic groups be unconcerned that they are losing in the competition.

I regard this last possibility as remote at best. The proposition that an ethnic group should or would be unconcerned with its own eclipse and domination is certainly not expected by any theoretical or ideological perspective of which I am aware. The present immigration policy essentially places America "in play" as an arena of ethnic competition in a sense which does not apply in the non-Western nations of the world where the implicit assumption is that territory is held by its historically-dominant people. Under present policies, each racial/ethnic group in the world is encouraged to press its interest in expanding its demographic and political presence in America and can be expected to do so if given the opportunity.

Contrary to policies they advocate for the United States, American Jews have had no interest at all in proposing that immigration to Israel should be similarly multi-ethnic or that Israel should have an immigration policy that would threaten the hegemony of Jews in Israel. Indeed, the very deep ethnic conflict within Israel is an excellent example of the failure of multi-culturalism. Similarly, while Jews have been on the forefront of movements to separate church and state in the United States and often protested lack of religious freedom in the Soviet Union, the control of religious affairs by the Orthodox in Israel has received only belated and half-hearted opposition by American Jewish organizations (Cohen, 1972, 317) and has not prevented the all-out support of Israel by American Jews, despite the fact that Israel’s policy regarding immigration is quite the opposite of that of Western democracies.

At present the interests of non-European-derived peoples to expand demographically and politically in the United States are widely perceived as a moral imperative, while the attempts of the European-derived peoples to retain demographic, political, and cultural control are represented as "racist" and patently immoral. From the perspective of these European-derived peoples, the prescribed morality entails altruism and self-sacrifice, and it is unlikely to be viable in the long run. And, as we have seen, the viability of such a morality of self-sacrifice is especially problematic in the context of a multicultural society in which everyone is highly conscious of group membership and there is between-group competition for resources.

Although the success of the anti-restrictionist effort is an indication that people can be induced to be altruistic toward other groups, I rather doubt such altruism will continue to occur if there are obvious signs that the status and political power of the European-derived group is decreasing while the power of other groups increases as a result of immigration and other social policies. The prediction, both on common sense grounds and on the basis of psychological research on social identity process (e.g., Hogg & Abrams, 1987), is that as other groups become increasingly powerful and salient in a multicultural society, the European-derived peoples of the United States will become increasingly unified and that contemporary divisive influences among the European-derived peoples of the United States (e.g., issues related to gender and sexual orientation; social class differences; religious differences) will be increasingly perceived as unimportant. Eventually these groups will develop greater cohesion and a sense of common interest in their interactions with the other ethnic groups with profound consequences on the future history of America and the West.

NOTES

1 Raab is associated with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL), and is executive director emeritus of the Perlmutter Institute for Jewish Advocacy at Brandeis University. He is also a columnist for the San Francisco Jewish Bulletin. Among other works, he is co-author, with Seymour Lipset of The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing-Extremism in America, 1790-1970 (Lipset & Raab 1970), a volume in a series of books on anti-Semitism in the United States sponsored by the ADL.

2 In Australia, Miriam Faine, an editorial committee member of the Australian Jewish Democrat stated that "The strengthening of multicultural or diverse Australia is also our most effective insurance policy against anti-semitism. The day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian" (in McCormack 1994, p. 11).

3 Moreover, a deep concern that an ethnically and culturally homogeneous America would compromise Jewish interests can be seen in Silberman’s comments on the attraction of Jews to "the Democratic party . . . with its traditional hospitality to non-WASP ethnic groups. . . . A distinguished economist who strongly disagreed with Mondale’s economic policies voted for him nonetheless. ‘I watched the conventions on television,’ he explained, ‘and the Republicans did not look like my kind of people." That same reaction led many Jews to vote for Carter in 1980 despite their dislike of him; ‘I’d rather live in a country governed by the faces I saw at the Democratic convention than by those I saw at the Republican convention’ a well-known author told me" (pp. 347-348).

4 Goldberg (1996, 160) notes that the future neo-conservatives were disciples of Trotskyist theoretician Max Schachtman. A good example is Irving Kristol’s (1983) "Memoirs of a Trotskyist."

5 Grant’s letter to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization emphasized the principle argument of the restrictionists, i.e., that the use of the 1890 census of the foreign born as the basis of the immigration law was fair to all ethnic groups currently in the country, and that the use of the 1910 census discriminated against the "native Americans whose ancestors were in this country before its independence." He also argued in favor of quotas from Western Hemisphere nations because these countries "in some cases furnish very undesirable immigrants. The Mexicans who come into the United States are overwhelmingly of Indian blood, and the recent intelligence tests have shown their very low intellectual status. We have already got too many of them in our Southwestern States, and a check should be put on their increase" (p. 571). Grant was also concerned about the unassimilability of recent immigrants. He included with his letter a Chicago Tribune editorial commenting on a situation in Hamtramck, Michigan in which recent immigrants were described as demanding "Polish rule," the expulsion of non-Poles, and that only the Polish language be spoken even by federal officials. Grant also argued that differences in reproductive rate would result in displacement of groups that delayed marriage and had fewer children— clearly a concern that as a result of immigration his ethnic group would be displaced by ethnic groups with a higher rate of natural increase. (Restriction of Immigration; Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 5, 1924; p. 570.)

6 Restriction of Immigration; Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 5, 1924; p. 580-581.

7 Statement of the AJCongress, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 391.

8 Restriction of Immigration; Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 3, 1924; p. 303.

9 Restriction of Immigration; Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 3, 1924; p. 341.

10 For example, in the Senate debates of April 15-19, 1924, Nordic superiority was not mentioned by any of the proponents of the legislation but was mentioned by the following opponents of the legislation: Senators Colt (p. 6542), Reed (p. 6468), Walsh (p. 6355). In the House debates of April 5, 8, and 15, virtually all of the opponents of the legislation raised the racial inferiority issue, including Reps. Celler (p. 5914-5915), Clancy (p. 5930), Connery (p. 5683), Dickstein (p. 5655-5656, 5686), Gallivan (p.5849), Jacobstein (p. 5864), James (p. 5670), Kunz (p. 5896), LaGuardia (p. 5657), Mooney (p. 5909-5910), O’Connell (p. 5836), O’Connor (p. 5648), Oliver (p. 5870), O’Sullivan (p. 5899), Perlman (p. 5651); Sabath (p. 5651, 5662), and Tague (p. 5873). Several representatives (e.g., Reps. Dickinson [p. 6267), Garber [pp. 5689-5693] and Smith [p. 5705]) contrasted the positive characteristics of the Nordic immigrants with the negative characteristics of more recent immigrants without distinguishing genetic from environmental reasons as possible influences. They, along with several others, noted especially the lack of assimilation of the recent immigrants and their tendencies to cluster in urban areas. Rep. Allen argued that there is a "necessity for purifying and keeping pure the blood of America" (p. 5693). Rep. McSwain, who argued for the need to preserve Nordic hegemony, did not do so on the basis of Nordic superiority but on the basis of legitimate ethnic self-interest (pp. 5683-5; see also comments of Reps. Lea and Miller). Rep. Gasque introduced a newspaper article that referred to the "laws of heredity" and to the swamping of the race that had built America (p. 6270).

11 Restriction of Immigration. Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 3, 1924; p. 351.

12 See, e.g., Restriction of Immigration; Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization House of Representatives, sixty-eighth Congress, First Session, Jan. 5, 1924; p. 733ff.

13 Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, May 24-June 1, 1939: Joint Resolutions to Authorize the Admission to the United States of a Limited Number of German Refugee Children, p. 1.

14 Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, May 24-June 1, 1939: Joint Resolutions to Authorize the Admission to the United States of a Limited Number of German Refugee Children, p. 78.

15 Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, May 24-June 1, 1939: Joint Resolutions to Authorize the Admission to the United States of a Limited Number of German Refugee Children, p. 140.

16 Statement of the AJCongress, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 565.

17 Statement of the AJCongress, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 566. See also statement of Rabbi Bernard J. Bamberger, President of the Synagogue Council of America; See also the statement of the AJCongress, pp. 560-561.

18 Statement of Will Maslow representing the AJCongress, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 394.

19 Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, pp. 562-595.

20 Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 410.

21 Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 404.

22 Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 82nd Congress, first session, on S. 716, H. R. 2379, and H. R. 2816. March 6-April 9, 1951, p. 563.

23 Moreover, achieving parity between Jews and other ethnic groups would entail a very high level of discrimination against individual Jews for admission to universities or employment opportunities, and would even entail a large taxation on Jews in order to prevent the present Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth, since at present Jews are vastly over-represented among the wealthy and the successful in the United States (e.g., Ginsberg, 1994; Lipsett & Raab, 1995). Beginning in the 1920s, studies have repeatedly shown that Ashkenazi Jews have a full-scale IQ of approximately 117 and a verbal IQ in the range of 125 (see MacDonald, 1994 for a review). By 1988, Jews constituted about 40% of admissions to Ivy League colleges and Jewish income was at least double that of gentiles (Shapiro (1992, p. 116). Shapiro also shows that Jews are overrepresented by at least a factor of nine on indexes of wealth, but that this is a conservative estimate because much Jewish wealth is in real estate which is difficult to determine and easy to hide. While constituting approximately 2.4% of the population of the United States, Jews represented one half of the top 100 Wall Street executives. Lipset and Raab (1995) note that Jews contribute between one-quarter and one-third of all political contributions in the United States, including one-half of Democratic Party contributions and one-fourth of Republican contributions. Indeed, many Jewish intellectuals (including "neo-conservatives" such as Daniel Bell, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Norman Podhoretz, and Earl Raab) as well as Jewish organizations (including the ADL, the AJCommittee, and the AJCongress) have been eloquent opponents of affirmative action and quota mechanisms for distributing resources (see Sachar 1992, p. 818ff).

REFERENCES - see website: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/immigration.pdf