By way of preface, I live in a community that is very heavily populated by people of foreign birth. My own home county is 43.8 percent foreign. A few years ago, in making a Constitution Day address before a high school, I asked the superintendent, "How many nationalities are here today"?

And he said, "We made a census this morning. You are going to speak to 67 nationalities."

That is the district I come from.

There are three things I want to ask you:

First, if these people should be permitted to come into this country, have you any opinion as to whether they will remain segregated, having their own language newspaper, living in their own units, their own fraternal organizations, and the like, or will they become assimilated and become Americans in fact?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. My personal opinion is that this group is not amenable to ready assimilation in this country.

Mr. GRAHAM. Secondly, have you any opinion on the prevelance of the tenets of communism among the people in these camps?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. It is very probable. We have talked a lot about communism, but what do we know about their political views?

For example, I was reading in the paper the other day that there is a possibility that legislation might be introduced to bring into this country the exiled Polish Army.

Well, there are probably a lot of people in the army that would make good Americans, but I wonder just how many of the people in that army, particularly among their leaders, have persistently adhered to fascism?

You know, in my opinion, Poland has never laid claim to being a great democracy. We heard Rabbi Bernstein the other day saying that anti-Semitism was a great problem in Poland and in any country in Europe. There is a possibility that Communists might come into this country. There is also a possibility that rabid anti-Semites and Fascists might also come into this country. That might be the reason why they are afraid to go back to their homelands.

Mr. GOSSETT. And is it not possible, Mr. Williamson, that at least a good portion of these Polish soldiers are of one type or another— either bitterly one way or they are bitterly the other way?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. That is right. I am not ready to pat on the back everybody who says he is an anti-Communist. I want to know what

else he is.

Mr. CELLER. Mr. Williamson.

Mr. GRAHAM. I had not finished.

Mr. CELLER. Pardon me.

Mr. GRAHAM. In many of the letters written to me personally, this feature is emphasized-that there is no danger, or chance, rather, that any of these persons, should they be admitted, will become public charges-that they will be adequately screened in the first instance and will be properly distributed after their arrival here and will not congest in certain overpopulated or dense areas.

Have

you any thought on that?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. I think that is a lot of wishful thinking. The statement has been advanced that these people will not require housing because they will go into homes with relatives. Well, there is no

house that big. If a couple or family are coming over and going into somebody's brother's or sister's home, from the first day they step across the threshhold, they are looking for a house.

Mr. GRAHAM. Finally, I have one other question.

Have you any fears of a business recession and of these people becoming public charges later on?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. I think there is just as much chance, if not a greater chance, of those people becoming public charges as a lot of our native Americans, and probably more.

Mr. GRAHAM. Have you any thought on the question?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Excuse me.

They are probably a little more, because if they are in any area where there is a surplus of labor, I do not think that they are going to get as much of a break as veterans who are unemployed and citizens.

Mr. GRAHAM. Have you any information on any criminal propensities among these groups?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Only from statements that I have heard from officers who were in charge of the camps and were with the army of occupation. This very morning I was talking to a former Army officer who was stationed in Bavaria and had considerable contact with the displaced-persons camps; but even from his statement I am not ready to venture an opinion one way or the other.

Mr. GRAHAM. What I was driving at is this:

The lowered morale in Europe, the impairment of physical mechanism, and how far down the mental and moral processes have gone? Mr. WILLIAMSON. This is very possible, that after years of enslavement under Nazi Germany that people like that would fall into dismal patterns of behavior. That is very possible.

Mr. GRAHAM. In fairness to the groups that are in my section, when they first came in there they were very lawless. I have tried 299 murders in my town. I have tried 37 nationalities in one term of court. But as they went on and became Americanized, adapted to our institutions, they became fine citizens, and many of them today are outstanding men in our community, and women, as the process of time went on, but it has taken some time to do that.

I venture that that group came in before the advent of nazism and communism and fascism and the like.

Now, there is the mental criterion, as I see it.

Mr. GOSSETT. As a matter of just everyday common sense, it takes time for roots to grow deeply and for people to become deeply attached to institutions in their adopted lands. Do you not agree with that conclusion, Mr. Williamson?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Yes. I think our melting pot ought to boil a little longer.

Mr. GOSSETT. I think you made a very fine statement, sir.

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Thank you.

Mr. CELLER. Mr. Williamson, have you read the statement of Gen. Mark Clark, who is fresh from Austria, who says that the proportion of crime in the displaced-persons camps in infinitesimally small? Would you believe that. if he made that statement?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. I would certainly lend a lot of credence to what General Clark said.

Mr. CELLER. You heard the testimony of Rabbi Bernstein, who quoted Gen. Lucius Clay with reference to crime among the persons in the displaced-persons camps, did you not?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. CELLER. You will note that General Clay's statement, as repeated by Rabbi Bernstein, indicated that there was very little crime amongst the displaced persons.

Mr. WILLIAMSON. That is correct, Mr. Celler. That is why I did not want to form an opinion one way or the other as to the prevalence of crime among such people, should they be admitted to this country. Mr. CELLER. And General Hilldring, who has first-hand information because he has been in the displaced-persons camps since the beginning of 1943, and, of course, you have not been over there, have you?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. No; I was on the other side.

Mr. CELLER. General Hilldring indicates that as to any innuendo or intimation of communism among the displaced persons, that is unfair, and that there is no communism among the displaced persons, because they are fleeing from Communist-dominated lands.

Mr. GOSSETT. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CELLER. I was just asking a question on that.

Mr. GOSSETT. You keep going back to General Hilldring.

Now, I do not take everything General Hilldring says as the gospel truth, and he does not have any more right to speak to the effect that there is no communism in those camps than anybody else. He is a good soldier. He came up here as a representative of the State Department and he had to testify for this bill.

Mr. CELLER. He had to testify?

Mr. GOSSETT. Yes. Or resign.

Mr. CELLER. I must counter by saying that is an unfair statement concerning the conduct of General Hilldring.

Mr. GOSSETT. He is a good soldier. He is taking his orders.

Mr. CELLER. He is in the State Department. He is in charge of civilian affairs in the State Department, was attached to General Eisenhower, and I think you ought to reconsider that statement concerning the attitude of General Hilldring, that he comes here under orders, and testifies to something which may not be the fact and is contrary to the fact.

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Mr. Celler, I do not see how any individual can stand up and say that there just is not any communism among the 400,000 or 500,000 displaced persons, just because they are fleeing from Russia. I do not think that that is logical. They might be Communists of just a different color or they might be Communists who are anxious to get over to this country under the guise of being refugees.

Look at all the Nazi refugees that poured into France?

Mr. ROBSION. I was going to say that when you have a million or so people there under the control of the Army, and there would not be much likelihood of the commission of a lot of crimes over there, or if there are Communists there, and these folks want to come into this country, they would not be practicing it at this particular time. Mr. WILLIAMSON. That is right. They would try at least temporarily to conform to a certain standard but just because they are

refugees from communism, I would not shut my mind to the possibility that there may be quite a few who are Communists.

Mr. ROBSION. I agree with the distinguished gentleman. I am just as bitterly opposed to a lot of totalitarian forms of government in the world as I am to communism and each one of them would destroy human liberty and freedom. Both are based upon the same idea, that one man controls.

It means the overthrow of the Constitution and the laws that give rights to the people.

Is not that the idea?

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBSION. Now, in China today, we talk about communism, but we have there, on the other hand, a totalitarian government that is distasteful to the majority of the people even in China, as well as communism is distasteful. They are just two different groups, entirely overcoming the principle of self-control of the country, without regard to the liberty of the people.

Mr. CELLER. I think you will agree with me that the district of our distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Graham's district, is an intelligent district for repeatedly sending him back to Congress. notwithstanding its 67 nationalities that are represented there. Mr. WILLIAMSON. I must concede that.

Mr. FELLOWS. Are there any further questions?

Mr. GRAHAM. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FELLOWS. Thank you, sir.

Mr. WILLIAMSON. Thank you.

Mr. FELLOWS. We have Mr. Twomey and Mr. Green of the American Legion.

You may

take your choice as to which one shall be first.

STATEMENT OF COL. JOHN THOMAS TAYLOR, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN LEGION

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, once again the American Legion has the opportunity to appear here before your committee on a matter of immigration.

We have been coming before this committee for the past 25 years on this matter. Now it reaches an acute stage.

Here America spent its billions of dollars and its manpower in two world wars because of conflicting ideologies and oppressions that were sweeping Europe.

We believed at the time that we were contributing to advancement, so far as those countries were concerned, and yet the same thing happened again after this war that happened after the last war. As a result of our efforts, the displaced persons as they are now called, the upset persons, immediately, because of the hardships that they were enduring as a result of the war, in which we think at least we | helped to contribute some freedom, immediately start a great movement to come over here to the United States.

I am glad to see the way in which this committee has considered this whole matter objectively. There has been no rancor or bias injected into the discussion or the hearings. This committee has been looking upon this matter as we of the American Legion and other patriotic organizations, as to what is best for this country of ours, and I was

interested in what Judge Graham of Pennsylvania brought out, that when we became involved in this war, it was because of new ideologies that had come into existence, that had really caused the war-the conflict between fascism and nazism and all of the other isms; idealogies that had created new thinking and an entirely new aspect so far as those people living in those countries are concerned, and those very ideologies are the things that are being most discussed now and to some extent putting some degree of worry-I could almost say fearin the minds of the American people as to whether we are being subjected to them.

And at that very moment we are asked to set aside our immigration laws to permit these hundreds of thousands of people, the results of the war that we were involved in to save and rescue them, to come over into this country.

I have here with me today Jeremiah Twomey, the chairman of the subcommittee of our Americanism commission, who has devoted years to the study of this matter, and I present to you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, Mr. Twomey, as our first witness.

STATEMENT OF JEREMIAH J. TWOMEY, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION, NATIONAL AMERICANISM COMMISSION, AMERICAN LEGION

Mr. TWOMEY. My name is Jeremiah J. Twomey, chairman of the subcommittee on immigration and naturalization, on the National Americanism Commission of the American Legion.

The American Legion's mandate to oppose the admission of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the war-ravaged areas of Europe is prefaced with the preamble:

Our country is faced with a most critical housing shortage and hundreds of thousands of our war veterans are unable to secure homes, and the fact that serious unemployment is possible in the not distant future

This specific mandate supplements the long-established policy of our organization formulated during the postarmistice period when millions of Europeans were making their plans to emigrate to America, and propositions similar in nature to the bill now under consideration were before the Congress for the relief of refugees from the Near East. Congress at that time enacted the first numerical limitation on immigration, and embarked upon a study of restrictive measures aimed at preserving the character of our population which eventually found its expression in a national policy known now as the basic national origins quota law.

We view immigration as a long-time national investment in human family stocks which will inevitably influence greatly the character, the natural abilities, and weaknesses of the Americans of the future; and, accordingly, we are constrained to urge that immigration be controlled in such a manner that every immigrant would constitute an economic asset, a future social asset, and an asset to the natural hereditary qualities of the Nation.

Now, as immediately following World War I, appeals are being addressed to our humanitarian impulses to summarily jettison our well-considered national policy by increasing immigration in such large numbers as would drastically increase some of the quotas al