IMMIGRATION: Let It Go Hang

In the warm afterglow of the Hungarian revolution, President Eisenhower laid U.S. prestige on the line by urging Congress to increase the annual number of immigrants to the U.S. from about 155,000 to about 190,000. He also laid U.S. good faith on the line—to the cheers of Congressmen and editorial writers—by admitting 24,-600 Hungarian refugees to the U.S. “on parole,” with the tacit understanding that legislation to grant them permanent visas would come later.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Mississippi’s Democrat James Oliver Eastland. and the House Judiciary Committee, starring Pennsylvania’s Democrat Francis E. (“Tad”) Walter, co-author of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. handed the President and the U.S. their answer. Its net: the U.S.’s prestige and the U.S.’s good faith could go hang.

The Senate and House committees moved separately but on parallel lines toward a “compromise” immigration bill. Immigration to the U.S. would stay just about where it was, at 155,000 a year, parceled out in national quotas that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe as against harder-pressed people from Southern and Central Europe. As for the 24,600 Hungarian refugees “on parole,” the House Judiciary Committee considered the President’s request for permanent status, voted it down by 15 to 11. The Senate committee ignored it completely. So the 24,600 Hungarians—”freedom fighters” was once the term—would have to stay indefinitely on parole.