Hate-Mongers Favor McCarran-Walter Act, Southern Jewish Weekly (Article, July 1953)
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Hate-Mongers Favor McCarran-Walter Act
The nation's bigots are using the [ongoing] controversy over the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act as another springboard to attack Jews, the Anti-Defamation League stated today.
A survey of this country's hate-press, the League said, shows that professional anti-Semites from coast-to-coast are supporting the Act and charging that attempts to liberalize the measure are part of a "Marxist-Jewish plot" to flood the country with "Red-Jewish elements" and other aliens who are "determined to abolish our government."
The League reported that Gerald Smith has organized a special "Save the McCarran Act Committee" to "stop the flood of Jews that have been pouring into America" while the discredited news analyst, Upton Close, has warned that "liberal and Jewish fury" against the Act reflects "determination to change the very character of this nation through population change and control." Similar sentiments have been expressed by the New Jersey anti-Semite, Conde McGinley who has maintained that he doesn't want Marxists and "this Talmudic group" to "move in here and destroy our freedom" and change "our wonderful country into a land of confusion and fear."
On the West Coast, the League said, the young anti-Semite, Frank L. Britton, charged that "the Jews" wanted the laws repealed because it "bars subversive and communist elements" and "would make large numbers of would-be Jewish immigrants ineligible for entry into the U.S." He wanted to retain the Act, Britton added, because it was the only effective way to exclude "undesirable Jewish immigrants" including "such scum" as "criminals, sex perverts, homosexuals, Communists, and persons suffering from physical and mental diseases."
The League's survey also noted that Merwin K. Hart, President of the National Economic Council, has expressed concern over what he called the "manufactured hullabaloo" over the McCarran-Walter Act. Hart asserted that it was the "same alien influence" which got us into both World Wars that "now fights bitterly" to have the Act repealed or amended, and warned that the country would be "submerged by these people from Central and Southern Europe" if the immigration bars were let down.
More forthright were the comments of the anti-Semitic pamphleteer, Robert L. Williams, who claimed that it was the "left-wing ministers, rabbis, and the whole constellation of subversive organizations which promote Marxism" that were "calling for changes which would permit resumption of the invasion of the hordes of Marxist-indoctrinated Jews and other undesirables." The League said that Williams had resented the fact that President Eisenhower had called the Act discriminatory and wrote that the President apparently "does not seem to understand that American people, the good racial stock, must discriminate or cease to exist."
In their latest "smear" campaign the professional anti-Semites have generally ignored the fact that the Act's discriminatory provisions have been attacked by Protestant and Catholic groups and that Americans from every walk of life have been publicly expressed their disapproval of the law which they feel is inconsistent with the fundamental concepts of our democratic traditions.
