OPINION:
An official of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum claims that “deep anti-Semitism” among the American public in the 1930s was to blame for the fact that America’s immigration quotas were never filled, even as hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were fleeing Nazi Germany (“U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum opens exhibition on American response to Nazism,” Web, April 22).
But the American public did not make immigration policy; President Franklin D. Roosevelt did. The Roosevelt administration inherited a strict immigration system from its predecessors, but made it much worse by imposing a maze of bureaucracy and rigorous requirements that made the application process profoundly burdensome and disqualified large numbers of deserving applicants.
The result was that the quotas for immigrants from Nazi Germany and Axis-occupied countries were filled in only one of FDR’s 12 years in office. In eight of those years, the quotas were less than 25 percent full. A total of 190,000 quota places that could have saved lives instead sat unused.
Mr. Roosevelt was fully aware of the unfilled quotas. In a letter in reply to a 1935 plea from New York Gov. Herbert Lehman for a more lenient approach to visa applicants from Germany, FDR wrote: “I am informed that nearly all immigration quotas have been considerably under-issued during the past four years.”
It’s certainly true that there was a great deal of anti-Semitism in American society in the 1930s. But U.S. government policy — including immigration policy — is decided by the chief executive. President Roosevelt should not be absolved of responsibility for the policy decisions he made.
RAFAEL MEDOFF
Director
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Washington
Please read our comment policy before commenting.