The Importance of International Affairs in Immigration Policy, Part 1

I’ve been spending more time in the Library of Congress lately, and have found a couple of really interesting documents. One in particular I’d like to talk about today:

The first is a document entitled “Refugee Problems, World Survey,” a State Department report from 1958. The document outlines U.S. refugee policy throughout the world, and U.S. interests in various refugee crises. Of interest to my work are the sections on Hong Kong. The document states

It is a basic policy of the United States to seek to promote friendship for the United States among the captive populations and to bolster their hope and faith in ultimate freedom. As long as the Chinese refugees in Hong Kong, having rejected Communism, were willfully enduring unexampled misery and hopelessness rather than return to their Communist-dominated homeland, the United States could not remain unidentified with efforts to meet the problem.

State then lists three possible courses of action – to “remain indifferent”; to offer substantial aid; or “to begin a program of limited and selective assistance.” State recommends the latter.

On the surface this decision isn’t surprising – while supporting Chinese refugees in Hong Kong was seen as an important part of the fight against Communist China, by discrediting the regime and by giving hope to others still inside the “Bamboo Curtain,” in practice, the U.S. focused their refugee efforts much more on eastern Europe, and on escapees from the Iron Curtain. Legislators designing refugee legislation spoke of “token numbers” of refugees from China, and shied away from any effort that would admit great numbers of Asians.

But by viewing only the domestic picture, or the legislative debates, a rather one-sided picture emerges – whatever their motivations, legislators did not want to resettle large groups of Chinese refugees. But, going back to State’s report, the reason given for advocating only limited intervention is illuminating. After discounting the first proposition (doing nothing,) on principle, the report states

The second alternative was not practicable, since it constituted a virtual assumption of responsibility at vast cost to the United States for a matter that properly rested with the sovereign British authorities in Hong Kong. Moreover, such a program would have been in conflict with the British political position and would have contained a threat to British prestige in the Far East.

While we can’t simply take the report’s word on face value, the added element of U.S.-British diplomacy incorporates another dimension to the pros and cons of refugee intervention. I need to play with this idea more, but I think the Colonial, and specifically British, interests in Hong Kong need to be considered, when analyzing East Asian refugee policy. (I’ve also found a number of other documents referring to Britain’s interests in Hong Kong, to the point where one State Department dispatch writes that Britain most probably recognized the government of Communist China to protect it’s own business interests in the territory.)

In my next post I’m going to talk about a series of cases prepared by Congressman Celler’s staff, to highlight the restrictiveness of the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.)