Russians Cancel U.S. Visit

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27637, 19 April 1955, Page 13

Russians Cancel U.S. Visit

(Rec. 8 p m.) WASHINGTON, April 17. The State Department announced today that the visit of 11 Soviet student editors to the United States had been cancelled by the Kremlin. Moscow reports said the editors objected to being fingerprinted as required by United States immigration laws and to signing a form assuming responsibility for any inconveniences caused by being delayed on their return home.

The State Department spokesman said these requirements dated back to 1940 and had been applied without discrimination since then to about 500,000 immigrants and visitors a year. The quarrel between the student editors and the State Department over immigration laws was “farcical and tragical,” the “Manchester Guardian” said today. The quarrel showed t.zo things at once—“how hard it is .to leave Russia and how hard it is to enter the United States without getting ink all over yourself.”

The “Manchester Guardian” said the Soviet students were right to call the American regulations “humiliating.” “Our Home Office may be more liberal than Moscow or Washington, but it can scarcely look on with the laughter of the pure in heart. The game of visas and barriers is one we have all learnt to play. In this story, everybody, spectators included, has inky fingers.”