The Importance of International Affairs in Immigration Policy, Part 2.

Continuing from my last post, today I’d like to talk about a series of documents prepared by Congressman Emanuel Celler’s office c.1954. Celler chaired the House Committee on the Judiciary, and these cases were prepared as part of testimony highlighting the extreme restrictiveness of the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.) Celler led the fight to replace the Act, culminating in 1965 with the passage of the Hart-Celler Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act.)

Celler’s staff most probably picked this series of cases for their representativeness as the most innocent victims of the immigration system they could find, those excluded from the country because of minor crimes in their past. Here are two examples:

(1) Anneliese Else Hermine Neumann, a German girl, stole two bags of coal while working in a railway coal yard in Berlin in Jan. 1947. In 1951 she married a Sergeant Ware, and applied for an immigrant visa. Her application was denied on the grounds that she had committed a “crime involving moral turpitude.”

“Sergeant Ware pleaded in behalf of his wife, stressing that in 1947, her father was still a British prisoner of war and her mother was incapacitated due to the fact that she had been wounded in both legs during the bombing of Berlin. There were at that time six younger children in the Neumann family, and the only reason Anneliese stole the coal was to keep the family warm.”
“There was no relief possible under the law, and Sergeant Ware had to resort to a private bill.”

(2) “Edith Ruth Smith (nee Kunick) married Sergeant Smith of the US Army in Germany in 1952. Their marriage had the prior approval of the American military authorities, but when it came to issuing an immigration visa to Mrs. Smith, it was discovered that Mrs. Smith, while 18 years old, committed “a crime involving moral turpitude”. Here are the facts as reflected in officials reports.”
“During an outing in 1948 in Stuttgart, Germany, Edith’s sister, 16 years old, climbed a walnut tree and while shaking the nuts from the tree, fell and fractured both arms. She was subsequently notified to appear at police headquarters for questioning. Edith, although not summoned, accompanied her sister because of the latter’s injuries. At police headquarters, both of them were charged with stealing walnuts from a tree, which was the property of the city of Stuttgart. The two girls paid a fine (roughly equivalent to 10 cents) but Edith Kunick, now Mrs. Paul William Smith, has been refused a visa.”

I find these cases extremely interesting. In both, the protagonists are wives of servicemen, whose husbands attempted to bring them over to the United States, only to find them excluded on a technicality. This admission of military brides had by this point already become a contentious topic in immigration policy, and I think it is telling that instead of using any other type of migrant (laborers, noncitizen military personnel, male immigrants from Europe, etc.,) Celler’s staff chose the spouses of servicemen. Whether this was simply to highlight the plight of “our boys overseas” who couldn’t bring in their wives, or whether it had more to do with the gendered nature of the migrants is unclear, but interesting nonetheless.

Each case references crimes committed in postwar West Germany, which seems to me to be as much of a criticism of the rule of law in West Germany (and the sorry state of its postwar society) as in the U.S. – i.e. although we refuse to allow these women in on technicalities, conditions in West Germany forced them to commit these petty crimes in the first place.

The case of Anneliese Neumann also states that Congress had to resort to a privately sponsored bill to admit her. The report implies that the McCarran-Walter Act not only discriminates unnecessarily, but also creates more work for Congress, since private bills are now required to correct its injustices.

Lastly, in the case of Edith Smith, the report goes out of its way to mention that the military had already approved the marriage, (which on policy they would do only if the spouse would be eligible to enter the U.S.,) while the consular officials, acting under the McCarran-Walter Act, denied them entry. This clash between military and civilian agencies, coming in the post-WWII and Korean War era seems to me a good way to draw on pro-military sentiment, especially overseas, to push for immigration reform. In this light this line of argument can be viewed as showing the superiority and inherent “rightness” of military authority over consular/legislative.

I’m not convinced, as Celler’s staff seemed to be, that these cases represent a failure of law rather than a failure in the interpretation of law, but the interplay between gender (military brides,) foreign diplomacy (U.S.-West German relations,) and the rule of law makes these cases an ideal window into the complexities of immigration policy after WWII, and an excellent find.