REFUGEES IN AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 26, 30 July 1940, Page 9

REFUGEES IN AMERICA

SURVEY OF POSITION

MANY NOW FARMERS

WIDE DISTRIBUTION WANTED

The rise of Hitler in Germany and its wars of conquest now in full swing have driven approximately 100,000 refugees to the United States of America, where they have established permanent homes since 1933, according to a survey of Federal agencies and refugee aid organisations at New York, states the "Christian • Science Monitor." The actual outbreak of war last September, however, drastically cut immigration figures. German, Austrian, CzechiO-Slovakian, and Polish exiles found it difficult to get. transportation to America. The National Refugee Service estimates that one-third of the 100,000 persons legally admitted to the United States remained in New York City. Another third joined relatives elsewhere in the States, and the remain-, ing third were aided by the Refugee Service to settle in almost every State of the Union. About 75 per cent, of the refugees are Jewish, but the proportion of Christians is rising. "We are only concerned with the refugees after they reach the United I States —helping them to become good] Americans," an official of the Refugee Service said. "We stress decentralisation. We feel that it is unwise to permit immigrants to concentrate in New York city. "They defeat their own chances of learning American ways sooner than they otherwise would. Last year we helped settle 4000 individuals in 750 communities." THE LABOUR MARKET. Refugee Aid groups said the chief attack by Americans on the influx of refugees was that they took their jobs away from workers. Spokesmen for relief groups held, however, that the reverse was often the case. There had been many instances where a refugee had' started a business that was giving work to numbers of Americans. An analysis of the 33,315 refugee arrivals from Germany and Austria in the fiscal year from July 1, 1938, to June 30, 1939, the period of the greatest immigration of Hitler exiles, showed that 19,000 of the total were married women, children, or unemployable men, leaving fewer than 15,000 men to be counted as potential additions to' the American labour market. Dr. Gabriel Davidson, general manager of the Jewish Agricultural Society, declared that although Jews in their former homelands were not farmers, many of them turned to agriculture in America. The society placed 173 families on farms in six States last year.