The Labor of Refuge:

Kalmyk Displaced Persons, the 1948 Displaced Persons Act,

and the Origins of U.S. Refugee Resettlement

By

Jessica Johnson

B.A., University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2003

A.M., Brown University, 2006

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of American Studies at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May, 2013

© Copyright 2013 by Jessica Johnson

This dissertation by Jessica Johnson is accepted in its present form

by the Department of American Studies as satisfying the

dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date______Robert Lee, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date______Ralph Rodriguez, Reader

Date______Naoko Shibusawa, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date______Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

iii

CURRICULUM VITAE

Jessica Johnson was born in Wichita, Kansas on July 17, 1981. She received a

Bachelor of Arts in History and Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2003 and a Master of Arts in Public Humanities from Brown University in 2006. As a doctoral student at Brown University, she worked on public history projects at the

Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the John Nicholas Brown Center and the

Smithsonian Institution. She also coordinated programs for the Sarah Doyle Women’s

Center and taught several undergraduate courses.

Johnson’s work has been supported by the Joukowsky Family Foundation

Presidential Dissertation Fellowship and the Mary L.S. Downes Dissertation Fellowship from Brown University; the Myrna F. Bernath Fellowship from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations; and the Andrew Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic

Studies from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She has been a dissertation fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and a faculty fellow at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.” – Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

This dissertation is not a work of fiction, at least to the best of my knowledge. Yet

Flannery O’Connor’s words nonetheless ring true. Writing a dissertation is a terrible experience. I begin my acknowledgements by acknowledging and honoring this truth. For in naming, making sense of, and coming face to face with this terribleness, I not only survived this dissertation, but I grew tremendously as a person. I have the deepest gratitude to the constellation of friends, colleagues, and communities who were there for me during this process.

This constellation is vast. Wendy Lee gave great advice. Amanda Katz got me out of the office and into a canoe. Cynthia Ellis saw me and helped me see myself. Hollis

Mickey was a wise and generous friend and teacher. Renee Evans made a secret and magical world with me. Angela Mazaris, Liza Burbank, Thomas Chen, Sara Matthiesen, and Sarah Wald were extraordinary colleagues in the Brown University Department of

American Studies, as well as dear friends and persons who I admire very much. Gwen,

John, and Vera Dane were so much fun. Liz Tomsich and Miranda O’Hayer were like sisters. Ashley Trull, Azar Trull, Kerry Bergin and the WTGQ Caucus showed me a different way of listening, feeling, and caring in the world. Mireya Loza, Alma Carrillo,

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Jin Suk Bae, Jasmine Tang, and Julia Timpe were among my first family in Providence.

Scratch Farm and everyone on it provided vital community during the last months of this project.

More than just brilliant scholars, the members of my dissertation committee were laid back, personable, supportive, and compassionate. They believed in this project and they believed in me. Thank you Robert Lee, Naoko Shibusawa, and Ralph Rodriguez. If I could add two lines to the signature page, Susan Smulyan’s and Gail Cohee’s names would also appear there. Their mentorship was invaluable. Steve Lubar and Evelyn Hu-

DeHart offered critical support at critical moments. Erika Lee was my first mentor and teacher and an exemplary one. Naia Cucukov introduced me to the history of the Kalmyk

DPs through her 2003 student documentary The Haven – Revisited. Eli Feiman, Amanda

Katz, Ani Mukherji, Julia Timpe, and Silja Maehl translated faded, hand-written letters from French, German, and Russian into a language I could read.

The Department of American Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and

Ethnicity in America, and the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center offered sustaining intellectual community. The Joukowsky Family Foundation, the Society for Historians of

American Foreign Relations, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation provided essential funding for this research. Archivists at the Brethren Library and

Historical Society, the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the

Harry S. Truman Library, the Immigration History Research Center, the National

Archives, the New Mexico State University Library, the New York University Tamiment

Library, and the Presbyterian Historical Society helped me to navigate the maze of archival research. The staff at the Rockefeller Library circulation desk, especially Roland

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Harper, Jennifer Kennedy, and Jennifer Martenson, went above and beyond. So did many other Brown staff, particularly Patricia Balsofiore, Jeff Cabral, Carole Costello, and Jean

Wood.

So many others have done so much. With much gratitude to everyone—friends, mentors, colleagues, and confidants, including those whose names I may have neglected to mention: Ghada AbdelQader, Jack Amoureux, Devon Anderson, Claire Andrade-

Watkins, Horace Ballard, Patricia Balsofiore, Sasha Berkoff, Susanna Bohme, James

Campbell, Clarissa Ceglio, Joe Gin Clark, Andrew Cook, Janet Cooper-Nelson, Abe

Dane, Jan Faust Dane, Matthew Delmont, Sean Dinces, Pier Dominguez, Julia Drew, Bev

Ehrich, Jennifer Eyl, Caroline Frank, Sara Fingal, Stephanie Fortunado, Elena Gonzales,

Lizzy Gore, Jonathan Hagel, Sandra Haley, Laura Hess, Megan Hinton, Benjamin

Holtzman, Elizabeth Hoover, Andrew Hund, Melanie Kohnen, Karl Jacoby, Sheyda

Jahanbani, Hilary Kaplan, Majida Kargbo, Eric Larson, Erika Lee, Heather Lee,

Jooyoung Lee, Sanford Lee, Karen Lepri, Hilda Lloréns, Patrick Malone, Derek

Matteson, Emily McCartan, Gabriel Mendes, Katie Miller, Chana Morgenstern, Laura

Mulley, Crystal Ngo, Jonathan Olly, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Patricia Perea, Leah

Perry, Nicole Restaino, Annette Rodriguez, John Rogers, Gabriel Rosenberg, Malgorzata

Rymsza-Pawlowska, Felicia Salinas, Robert Self, Katerina Seligmann, Derek Seidman,

Sarah Seidman, Rowan Sharp, Aiko Takeuchi, Aslihan Tokgoz, Kathryn Tomasek, Tam

Tran, Anne Valk, Molly Wallace, and Miel Wilson.

Finally, I thank my parents and my sisters for their love and for their commitment to each other and to me. Mary Johnson, Matt Johnson, Ali Johnson and Emily Stump: this project is from you and it is for you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1 An Introduction from the Margins

UNIT ONE Kalmyk Resettlement, 1951-1952

Chapter One 45 A Planned Migration: Purposes, Priorities, and Power Dynamics during the Planning Period

Chapter Two 92 Placing Refugee Workers: Kalmyk Resettlement in Practice

UNIT TWO The Social Movement for DP Admissions, 1946-1948

Chapter Three 132 Refugee Advocates and the Promotion of Refugee Admissions as a Labor Importation

Chapter Four 171 Maids and Farmhands: The Construction of Refugee Resettlement as an Endeavor to Force DPs’ Assimilation, Exploit their Labors, and Exclude Jews

UNIT THREE The Legal Acrobatics of an Obfuscated Labor Migration: The 1948 Displaced Persons Act

Chapter Five 211 Workers by Law: A Multifunctional Labor Migration

Chapter Six 241 Constitutive Connections: Patriarchal Families, Moral Economies, Religious Work/ers, and the DP Labor Migration

UNIT FOUR Policy through Practice: Administering Resettlement, 1948-1952

Chapter Seven 290 By the End and From the Start, a Story of Structural Choices: Federal and State DPCs Orchestrate the DP Labor Migration

Conclusion 327 Another Labor of Refuge

Bibliography 331

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INTRODUCTION

An Introduction from the Margins

In late November of 1951, the first group of Kalmyk refugees bound for the

United States finally received their embarkation notices. The displaced persons camps where they had lived since the end of World War II were to close in just a few weeks, and at the turn of the New Year, those who had not resettled elsewhere would be left to fend for themselves in post-World War II . Among this first group of just over 100 persons were Bembe and Eketarina Atschinow and their fourteen-year-old son Stewa.

Originally from , the Atschinows were living in , Yugoslavia before

World War II, and during the German occupation, they were deported to as forced laborers in a Linz factory. Also receiving an embarkation notice was Mashla

Ashtanow, a 34-year-old man from the region of Russia who had been taken to

Germany in 1943 as a forced laborer on a German farm. During the war, Ashtanow’s legs were so badly frozen that he afterwards spent a year and half in a hospital.1

1 “Application for Immigration Visa and Alien Registration for Eketarina Atschinow,” November, 1951, 2, Subject Files, Department of Immigration and Naturalization, Freedom of Information Act Request # NRC2008039748 to the Citizenship and Immigration Services, January 23, 2009; “Ashtanow, 1

The Atschinow family, Mashla Ashtanow and the other who were to leave for the United States on December 4, 1951 were among more than one thousand

Kalmyks living in refugee camps in the U.S. zone during the years after World War II.

Members of an Asian ethnic group from the Don Basin and Astrakhan regions of Russia, the Kalmyks who ended up in the camps were staunch anti-communists. Like the

Atschinow family, the majority had fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution or the

Russian Civil War. Some fled because they feared retribution for their resistance Soviet rule as members of the anti-Bolshevik “White Movement.” As an oppressed minority group in the , others left as a result of racial, ethnic, religious or political persecution. Those who fled Russia during the 1910s, 20s and 30s were living as exiles in

Yugoslavia, , , and neighboring nations when the Germany Army invaded during World War II. During the occupation, many were deported to Germany and Austria as Ostarbeiters (Eastern Workers). Others left more voluntarily and for a range of reasons: in order to join the Axis fight against the Soviet Union; because they feared retribution if the Soviet Union were to occupy these nations; or simply out of the sheer desperation of their situation. Those who survived World War II in Germany and

Austria were afterward sent to displaced persons camps, generally either in Schleissheim or Ingolstadt, West Germany.

Like Mashla Ashtanow, the others—about a third of Kalmyks in the camps—left the Soviet Union during World War II alongside the retreating German Army. Some were taken as POWs or forced laborers. Others left out of fear of persecution for their

Mashla, 34 Years,” file 36, box 1, Series 4/1/6, Brethren Historical Library and Archives (BHLA), Elgin, IL.

2 suspected or actual collaboration with the Germans. Some then became members of the

Kalmykian Calvary Corps, which was affiliated with the German Armed Forces. Only after the war’s end were they reunited with the Kalmyks who had fled Russia decades before. Their co-ethnics who remained in Russia were deported en mass to in

December of 1943, and the Kalmyk DP camps believed that they may be the only remaining Kalmyks in the world.2

According to the agreement reached between the United States, the United

Kingdom, and the Soviet Union at the Yalta Conference in 1945, persons displaced during the war were to be repatriated to their home countries after the end of the war.

Seven million displaced persons, often referred to as DPs, were repatriated during 1945 and 1946. But out of fear of retribution and certain exile, more than one thousand

Kalmyks refused repatriation to the Soviet Union. The Kalmyks were not the only DPs to resist return. By 1946, more than one million DPs remained in refugee camps in the

American zone. As tensions with the Soviet Union escalated, Western powers’ approach to post-World War II refugees became increasingly dictated by Cold War concerns. In late 1946, as a result of a U.S.-led campaign, the organization that had initially overseen the DP camps, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), was replaced by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which set out to solve the so-called “DP problem” by resettling these persons in Western nations and to a lesser

2 Shamba Balinov, “Eighth Anniversary of the Extermination of the Kalmyk People by the ,” The 2, no. 4 (1951): 31–34, file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Kalmuks Balked in Search for Home,” Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1950; Paula G Rubel, The Kalmyk : A Study in Continuity and Change (Indiana University, 1967), 18–20; Sandcha Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, March 15, 1951, file 2, box 1, Kalmyk Resettlement Committee Records, TAM.029, Tamiment Library/Walter F. Wagner Labor Archives (TL/RFWLA), New York University Libraries; and for more on the Kalmyk deportation to Siberia, Elza-Bair Guchinova, “‘All Roads Lead to Siberia’: Two Stories of the Kalmyk Deportation,” trans. Catriona Kelly, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, no. 4 (2006): 239–286.

3 extent, in the global south.3 As planned, the IRO resettled hundreds of thousands of DPs.

Yet as a result of racism—often in the form of official Asian exclusion laws— resettlement nations, including the United States, universally refused to admit the

Kalmyks. As a result, while other DPs came and went, Kalmyks languished in the camps for more than half of a decade, essentially stranded.

That the United States finally agreed to admit the Kalmyks was no stroke of blind luck. Kalmyk community leaders in the DP camps and elsewhere in had spent years fighting for a way out of the camps. Along with several others, Sandcha Stepanow, a Russian-born lawyer who had been living in Prague when the Germans invaded in 1939 and who ended up in the Ingolstadt DP Camp after the war, and Badma Oulanoff, who was described as the intellectual leader of the Kalmyk and who had survived the war in northern after fleeing Czechoslovakia, formed an organization called the

Kalmook National Representation in Europe which was dedicated lobbying for their cause.4 In the face of pervasive international indifference and perceived disregard by the resettlement agency assigned to their case, this group of community leaders mobilized a small but dedicated band of American Christians and Russian exiles to lobby other nations on their behalf. Their most dedicated allies included Dimitry Kapatzinsky, a

3 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982): 1–24; Elliott, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Holborn, The International Refugee Organization, A Specialized Agency of the United Nations: Its History and Work, 1946-1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Gil Loescher and John A Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1986), 14–6; UNRRA: The History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998): 61–85.

4 “Dr. Erenjen Hara-Davan,” Kalmyk Buddhist Temple in Belgrade: An Exhibition, last modified February 2, 2000, http://members.tripod.com/kakono/hd.htm; Badma Oulanoff to Knut Halle, August 4, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Oulanoff to Halle, March 27, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Darsha Remilev to Knut Halle, April 22, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Sandcha Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, March 15, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

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Russian American immigrant and an officer in the New York City-based Russian

American Union for Protection and Aid to outside of Russia; Knut Halle, a

Unitarian Universalist from the Flatbush Unitarian Committee in Brooklyn, New York and a family friend of Kapatzinsky; and Archpriest George Count Grabbe, who lived in

Munich and who was the Chancellor of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox

Church outside Russia; as well as various others, from a Russian prince to the executive director of a major American anti-communist aid organization. These allies were motivated by their own anti-communist and anti-Soviet political beliefs, and for some— especially the —by their Christian faith.5

Together, the Kalmyks and their supporters convinced the IRO to step up their efforts to find a nation that would admit them.6 From Pakistan to Paraguay, Canada to

Morocco, the Kalmyks were rejected by over two dozen nations.7 But in July of 1951, it

5 The prince was Prince Sergei Sergeivich Belosselsky-Belozersky and the executive director was David Martin of the International Rescue Committee. Roland Elliott to David Martin, January 15, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Archpriest George Count Grabbe to Knut Halle, May 2, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Knut Halle to David Martin, January 30, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Knut Halle to Eleanor Roosevelt, May 4, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; David Martin to Sergei Belosselsky, June 13, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Badma Oulanoff to Knut Halle, August 4, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Sandcha Stepanow to Knut Halle, January 27, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Sandcha Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, n.d., Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, Bakhmeteff Archive (BAR-KAP), Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML), Columbia University, New York, NY.

6 Archpriest George Count Grabbe to Knut Halle, May 2, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

7 “219 Kalmuk DPs Watch Outcome of Bid to Enter U.S,” The Christian Science Monitor, September 23, 1949, 21; Naia Cucukov, The Haven – Revisited (Naia Cucukov, 2003), vhs, given to the author by Robert Lee; Archpriest George Count Grabbe to Knut Halle, May 2, 1951 and May 10, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Knut Halle to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, April 4, 1950 and April 6, 1950, folder 1, box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Knut Halle to Mexican Department of State, May 3, 1950, Misc., Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Halle to Stepanow, c. May 1950, Misc, box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; PJ Kolachov to Kapatzinsky, June 21, 1950, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR- KAP, RBML; James McTigue to PJ Kolachov, n.d., Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Badma Oulanoff to Knut Halle, March 27, 1951 TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Darsha Remilev and Family to Knut Halle, n.d., Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Paula G Rubel, The Kalmyk Mongols, 18–20.

5 finally seemed that they had found a solution. Out of a sense that admitting them would reflect favorably on the U.S.’s image in the context of the racially and morally charged

Cold War, the Attorney General declared them to be racially Asian but legally white in a

Bureau of Immigration Appeals test case argued by the IRO. In doing so, this decision eliminated the barrier that had previously prevented the Kalmyks from migrating to the

United States under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, making them the only group of color to be admitted under this law which was explicitly limited to European refugees.8

And although they did not know it at the time, theirs was last of the nation’s racial prerequisite cases before the U.S. Asian exclusion laws were overturned in 1952.9

By any account, when this first large contingent of Kalmyk DPs received their embarkation notices six months later, it seemed that their long nightmare was coming to a close.10 They had won against improbable odds. As Asians, as Buddhists, and as a national group without a nation state, they had fallen through the cracks of the emerging

8 Waldo Drake, “Torgut Mongols Seeking New Land: 617 Survivors of Once Great Tribe Lost People in DP Camp” The Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1949, 7; PJ Kolachov to Kapatzinsky, June 21, 1950, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; James McTigue to PJ Kolachov, n.d., Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Matter of Remilev, 4 I&N Dec. 275 (BIA 1951); B.N. Oulanoff, Memorandum on the Kalmuk DPs’ Race (: Imp. Union, 1950); Darsha Remilev to Immigration and Naturalization Service, March 21, 1950, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

While legally white, INS officers often recorded their race as “Calmook” on official forms. For example “Application for Immigration Visa and Alien Registration for Tsurum Sandjiew,” November, 21 1951, 1, Subject Files, Department of Immigration and Naturalization, Freedom of Information Act Request # NRC2008039734 to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

9 Despite this fact, the Kalmyks have been left out of existing accountings of the prerequisite cases. For example, Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York University Press, 1996).

10 Kalmyk leaders spoke of their predicament as a veritable nightmare. As Oulanoff described it to Knut Halle, the Kalmyks’ situation was “just as in a fairy tale: should you [the Kalmyks] turn to the left, you perish, should you go forward, you also perish, should you turn to the right, you perish, too.” Badma Oulanoff to Knut Halle, November 11, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA. In another letter, he wrote “Kalmuk DPs’ situation is such as if circumstances took them by the throats or as if precipices opened on all sides….” Oulanoff to Halle, Feb 28, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

6 international refugee regime. While based on ideas about the universality of human rights, the resettlement system was itself exclusive. Not only was the IRO solely concerned with Europe, entirely disregarding the millions of refugees in , the Middle

East and elsewhere, but the most influential players in the system were affiliated with

European ethnic or national groups or with Judeo-Christian religious denominations. As a result, the Kalmyks were initially without essential allies. Further, resettlement nations generally only admitted DPs as individuals or along with their immediate families.

Nations without Asian exclusion laws that were willing to admit the Kalmyks only consented to take a few, rather than allowing the community to migrate together as a group. Believing that they may be the only remaining Kalmyks in the world and dedicated to staying together, most Kalmyks insisted on a group migration.11

In preparation for their awaited journey to the United States, the IRO transferred this first large contingent of Kalmyk DPs from the camps in Schleissheim and Ingolstadt to the Funkkaserne Resettlement Center in Munich. In late November, this group was transported to the Port of Bremen, and finally, on the fourth of December, to dock of the

11 Archpriest George Count Grabbe to Knut Halle, May 10, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; “Kalmuks Balked in Search for Home,” Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1950; Liisa H. Malkki, “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (January 1, 1995): 495–523.

The Kalmyks themselves pointed out how their situation exposed these contradictions in the world system based on the universality of human rights, and they were aware of how their situation called into question the ideological foundations of the U.S.’s moral claims as the leader of the free world. As Remilev wrote to Halle in their first correspondence, the Kalmyks saw the United States as the “country of freedom and humanism … the birthplace of the charter of human rights.” Continuing, he explained that it is because of that vision of the United States that they were “absolutely” shocked by the U.S. actions toward the Kalmyks. In a passage that Halle underlined, Remilev said that U.S. law “reminded them [the Kalmyks] of German racism.” Remilev to Halle, April 22, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA. And as Badma Oulanoff put it to an American official, “We never expected that democratic and civilized peoples in the New World, in consideration of race and colour of the skin should refuse immigration to a little group of people who have lived for four centuries in Europe and who entered political and economic sphere of Europe a long time ago, a people which sacrificed all fighting against Bolshevism.” Oulanoff to Bragg, July 20, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

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U.S.S. General R. M. Blatchford. This former naval ship was set to transport them and hundreds of other DPs to the United States. Yet on the day they were to set sail, the U.S.

High Commissioner for Occupied Germany, acting upon direct instructions from the U.S.

State Department, ordered their removal from the ship’s rolls. Their migration was delayed until future notice, and until then, no Kalmyks would be permitted to leave

Germany.12

The Kalmyks panicked. There were no other resettlement options, and time was running out. The IRO-run camps were set to close in a matter of weeks, and the U.S. refugee program also expired on the first of the year. In that context, any disruption in scheduling during these last few weeks could jeopardize not just their own migration, but that of the thousands of other DPs who were set to leave the camps before they closed. As a result, the Kalmyks found broad opposition to this measure amongst the international aid community. Not just their few close allies, but the IRO and various American NGOs sent urgent telegrams to the State Department demanding that they immediately reverse this order.13

To the Kalmyks’ relief, the State Department complied, and this measure was withdrawn just three days later. Because it was rescinded so quickly and because U.S.

12 Donald Durnbaugh to Joe Mow, December 7, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; McCloy to Secretary of State, December 4, 1951, Resettlement U.S. 1951, Resettlement File 1941-1952, Records relating to the IRO and the DPC, Lot file no. 53 d. 307, RG 59, NACP; Joe Mow to Benjamin Bushong, December 5, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Harry Rosenfield to HICOG in Frankfort, November 30, 1951, Kalmuks, Rosenfield Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD (NACP); Harry Rosenfield to HICOG, December 7, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; John F. Thomas, Chief, Division of Repatriation and Resettlement, IRO, to Mr. C. Sowder, World Council of Churches, Munich-Pasing and Mrs. T. Schaufuss, Tolstoy Foundation, Munich-Pasing, December 11, 1951, “Kalmuks,” file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

13 Ibid.

8 resettlement officials eventually decided to permit DPs who received U.S. visas by

December 31, 1951 to leave Germany during the first months of 1952, this incident did not compromise the Kalmyks’ or other DPs’ ability to migrate to the United States. The

Kalmyks who should have set sail on December 4 left several days later, and by the end of April of 1952, all of the eligible Kalmyks in the camps had arrived in the United

States.14 However, when the order was first issued, there was no surety that post-1951 migrations would be permitted, and its issuance marked no less than a willingness to thwart their entire migration.15

What could have impelled the State Department to issue such an order? As a matter of policy, the State Department was a strong proponent of DP admissions, and the agency saw the Kalmyks’ admissions as a strategic foreign policy move. Their admittance would be held up as proof that the United States was the rightful leader of the free world, committed to racial tolerance and freedom when other nations looked the other way.16 As Knut Halle put it, “saving the balance of this great tribe” offered great

“propaganda value” to the United States.17 Indeed, the Marshall Plan Film Corps and later the United States Information Agency would both make propaganda films about the

Kalmyks, which were shown in eighteen countries across Europe to several hundred

14 Some were deemed ineligible for other reasons, generally because they or one of their family members failed a medical examination or because of their prior political affiliations. “Report for the Displaced Persons Commission,” June 26, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

15 McCloy to Secretary of State, December 4, 1951, Resettlement U.S. 1951, Resettlement File 1941-1952, Records relating to the IRO and the DPC, Lot file no. 53 d. 307, RG 59, NACP.

16 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 135; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 17; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 17-9.

17 Knut Halle to David Martin, February 26, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

9 thousand people.18 And before their race-based exclusion was overturned, the State

Department intervened behind the scenes to convince other nations to admit them. The fate of this small community was of concern to ranking American officials because their predicament had the potential to shed unwelcome light on the persistence of racism in this international system that was supposedly based on the universality of human rights, not to mention the persistence of racism in the United States, despite the nation’s geopolitical rhetoric otherwise. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained the situation in 1950, finding a resettlement nation for the Kalmyks was “in the best interest of the United States.”19

In practice, however, State Department officials were often hostile toward refugees. Those who worked in the consular offices set up in the camps were known to

18 According the Chief of Mission of the Mutual Security Agency, which was the agency that produced the first of the two propaganda films on the Kalmyks, the purpose of making films on refugees was to “arouse public interest in the refugee problem as a ‘symbol of our threatened civilization,’” meaning the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The agency did not keep records of the total number of persons who viewed the films, though the number likely ranged from many hundreds of thousands to several million. During one special screening, it was shown to an audience of 65,000. John Ferno, “Kalmucks,” Magazine No. 3, Directed by Nelo Risi, 1952 (Mutual Security Agency/Europe, Paris, 1952), 35 mm film, NACP; Albert Hemsing, “The Marshall Plan’s European Film Unit, 194801955: A Memoir and Filmography, 269-97,” Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1994); “The Haven, Original Production, Produced by Thomas Craven Film Corp.,” Foreign Versions, August 18, 1954, The Haven – English, Series: Movie Scripts, 1942-1965, Records of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), 1900-1992, RG 306, NACP; “Quarterly Report MSA Information Office, Western Germany, July 1 to September 30, 1952”, Subject Files, Office of Information, Records of the Mutual Security Agency, RG 469.3, NACP; Sic to Nordess, June 18, 1953, Correspondence, Office of Information, Records of the Mutual Security Agency, RG 469.3, NACP; Thomas Craven Film Corp., The Haven (United States Information Agency, 1954), 35mm filmstrip, 1452 ft, Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division, NACP, posted at http://khalmig.org/.

19 Acheson made these remarks in the context of a debacle in which Paraguay had agreed to admit the Kalmyks only to rescind the invitation once it became publicly known that the Kalmyks were Asian. The deal was originally conducted behind closed doors in order to prevent a public outcry. William W. Dick to Mr. Lawrence Dawson, Office of the Adviser on Refugees and Displaced Persons, “Confidential,” November 28, 1950; J. Donald Kingsley to William Dick, Confidential Telegram 1157; Archibald Randolph to Department of State, “Kalmucks’ Immigration Denied: Confidential Dispatch from Asuncion to the State Department,” November 10, 1950; and for quote, Dean Acheson to William Dick, “Confidential, A-66,” December 6, 1950. All are from file: Paraguay, Resettlement File 1941-1952, Records Relating to the IRO and the DPC, Lot file no. 53 d. 307, RG 59, NACP.

10 systematically attempt to thwart DPs’ migration to the United States. They were, as historian Leonard Dinnerstein puts it, intentionally obstructionist.20 Even before this incident, many Kalmyks had had negative experiences with American personnel. Darsha

Remilev, who had fled Russia in 1920 and had been working as a teacher and shop owner in Belgrade when he was deported to Germany in 1943 to work in a paper factory and whose application for immigration became the test case for the Kalmyks’ racial eligibility, recalled his interview at the American consulate as the “biggest unpleasant thing” of his entire experience in the DP camps. “Truly with every next question, I [was made to feel] guilty of something,” he wrote to Knut Halle. “In the end, I felt guilty for having come there and for having asked for refuge in this far off country across the ocean.” Shocked by his experience and by his initial rejection on racial grounds, Remilev wrote that while he thought that racism had “died along with the fall of Goebbels [Reich

Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels] … [it] was if he rose from the dead and afflicted the Kalmyk DPs” in the form of U.S. immigration law.21

Yet while the State Department issued the stop order, the impetus came not from the agency itself but from the Maryland-based Brethren Service Commission, a fact that makes this incident all the more curious. The Brethren Service Commission had volunteered to “resettle” the Kalmyks, which meant that they were responsible for planning their lives in the United States and easing their transition once they arrived. In

20 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Memo to America: The DP Story, Final Report of the Commission (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), 147-151; Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 108; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 187–9; Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 116; Carl J. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

21 Darsha Remilev to Knut Halle, April 22, 1950, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

11 the official parlance, they were the Kalmyks’ “sponsors.” Brethren Service took on this task willingly, and not simply because it would be fully funded by the IRO.22 Other resettlement agencies, which were referred to as “voluntary agencies” or “volagencies”, had balked at the idea of helping persons who were neither white nor of Judeo-Christian faith, yet Brethren Service was eager to sponsor them precisely because of this fact.23 As the only exception, taking on this project would afford the Church of the Brethren an opportunity to publicly testify to their denomination’s racial and religious tolerance. In other words, much like the Attorney General’s decision to admit them, Brethren Service’s decision to help the Kalmyks was not an act of unadulterated goodwill, but emerged in part from a realization that it would offer ideological dividends for themselves. As a result of the fact that it would demonstrate to the national and global community and to themselves that the Brethren faith offered an alternative to continued strife in this post-

Holocaust and early-Cold War moment, the Brethren Service Commission was deeply invested in this project’s success.24

Given their own stakes in this project and given the potentially catastrophic consequences of the stop order—in the words of ranking IRO official John Thomas, “it seriously jeopardize[d] the entire Kalmyk program”—the fact that they went to such lengths to delay the Kalmyks’ arrival in the United States suggests that whatever

22 Instead of using an acronym for “Brethren Service Commission,” I have chosen to shorten it as “Brethren Service” because this is the abbreviated title that Brethren Service Commission employees used in their own daily communication. Within this dissertation, I use both titles interchangeably.

23 Authorized resettlement agencies are still known as “voluntary agencies,” but the abbreviated usage has since been shortened from “volagency” to “volag.” This dissertation uses “volagency” in order to stay true to the parlance of the time.

24 J. Kenneth Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water: The Story of Brethren Service (Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 2001), 106; Lorell Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” Gospel Messenger, December 15, 1951, 19.

12 impelled it must have been quite important to them. Brethren Service told the State

Department that they needed to stall the Kalmyks’ migration because they had yet to make satisfactory arrangements for their resettlement.25 But this explanation is perplexing as there were actually several viable resettlement possibilities. Kalmyk leaders in the

European diaspora had gone to lengths to arrange for a group settlement in either

Paterson or Farmingdale, , both of which were home to substantial Russian communities, including several former military officers who were personal acquaintances of Oulanoff, Stepanow and other Kalmyk leaders, many of whom had also been military officers before the Russian Revolution. These contacts offered to provide housing and jobs for the entire Kalmyk DP community. Their American and Russian émigré allies supported this plan, and while there were some dissenters within the Kalmyk community, the outpouring from the camps indicated that most Kalmyks hoped to move to New

Jersey. In the case that this plan fell through, Halle and Kapatzinsky, in conjunction with

David Martin, who was the Executive Director of the anti-communist International

Rescue Committee, had arranged multiple alternatives, from Philadelphia to Alaska.

Further, the Brethrens themselves had the immediate capacity to settle them near New

Windsor, Maryland, where they operated a resettlement center that could be used to house them temporarily, as they had done for other DPs.26

25 Joe Mow to Donald Durnbaugh, December 12, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Harry Rosenfield to HICOG in Frankfort, November 30, 1951, Kalmuks, Rosenfield Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; John F. Thomas, Chief, Division of Repatriation and Resettlement, IRO, to Mr. C. Sowder, World Council of Churches, Munich-Pasing and Mrs. T. Schaufuss, Tolstoy Foundation, Munich-Pasing, December 11, 1951, “Kalmuks,” file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

26 Basil Bensin to Kapatzinsky, August 15, 1951, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Halle to Martin, July 31, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Koonz to Elliott, July 30, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Koonz to Elliott, August 15, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water; Martin to Oulanoff, August 10, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, 13

In reality, rather than a lack of viable resettlement options, the issue prompting the order was that Brethren Service had yet to finalize their plans for what had become their preferred location: New Mexico.27 Far from their headquarters and with few connections in the state, a New Mexico resettlement would be costly and inconvenient for the agency. New Mexico was also staunchly opposed by the Kalmyks, who wanted to be on the East Coast near an urban industrial center and who worried that life would be difficult in the rural and racially stratified Southwest. This location, however, was favored by the United States Displaced Persons Commission (DPC), which was the federal agency created to oversee the DP program and which Brethren Service had called on for special assistance. It was also the choice location of three additional federal agencies that Brethren Service and the DPC had empowered to intervene in this project: the United States Employment Service, the Department of Agriculture, and the

Department of Labor’s Farm Placement Service.28

In short, what impelled Brethren Service to delay their migration and to willfully jeopardize the entire project was their insistence on honoring these agencies’ preferences,

TL/RFWLA; Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Aaron Levenstein, Escape to Freedom: The Story of the International Rescue Committee (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1983); S. Stepanow to K. Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe (2), Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; and for quotes, B.N. Oulanoff to David Martin, October, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA, translated by Amanda Katz; D. Burchinow, Secretary General, Kalmook National Representation in Germany, to Mr. Benjamin Bushong, Director, Kalmook Resettlement Program, November 12, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

27 Joe Mow to Donald Durnbaugh, December 12, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

28 Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 7, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Elliott Shirk, “Memorandum: A Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” November 5, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; S. Stepanow to K. Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe (2), Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

14 no matter the difficulty for themselves and no matter the desires of the Kalmyks. And curiously, as this dissertation’s first unit shows, the crux of this matter—the insistence on settling the Kalmyks away from the Eastern Seaboard and in New Mexico specifically— is indicative not just of Brethren Service’s underlying allegiances, but of their underlying approach to the project. It is indicative of their insistence and the insistence of all involved on treating the Kalmyks’ resettlement as a coerced labor migration. In the face of the Kalmyks’ demands that they should be resettled on the East Coast nearby other

Russians and nearby an urban industrial center where they could seek factory work,

Brethren Service needed additional time to ensure that they would indeed go to—and stay in—New Mexico and in the farm labor and domestic service jobs where they planned to place them. This delay, in other words, was about ensuring that the terms of the Kalmyks’ labor migration would not be decided by the Kalmyks themselves, but by white

Americans, namely, Christian aid organizations working with government agencies and business leaders. Further, it was tied up in the expectation that they should be funneled into these low paid, marginalized, non-union occupations, rather than enter industrial work or other occupations in which they may be a source of competition for white

Americans, specifically white men.

The lengths Brethren Service went to in order to enforce this vision for the

Kalmyk labor migration suggests that this incident is a flash point. It is a historical moment that stands out for its intensity and curiousness and that sheds light on hidden themes in an otherwise sanitized historical record. There are records of this incident in the files of the U.S. State Department and the Displaced Persons Commission, but there is no mention of it in official accounts of the Kalmyks’ resettlement, most of which

15

Brethren Service had a hand in producing, either directly or indirectly, and there is only a trace of it in the voluminous records that the agency bequeathed to their denomination’s archives decades later.29 Deliberate or not, this erasure speaks to Brethren Service’s stakes in the representation of the Kalmyks’ resettlement as a moral endeavor. And importantly, the intensity of the incident itself underscores the extent to which enforcing the Kalmyk migration as a labor migration was prioritized by the agency.

…

This dissertation explores the economic formations of U.S. refugee resettlement as it first came about in the years after World War II. While the bulk of the dissertation takes a macrohistorical approach, we begin with a microhistory, focusing squarely on the

Kalmyks. This exploration of the Kalmyk resettlement project, an endeavor that was overseen by the Brethren Service Commission in collaboration with a range of other U.S. organizations and individuals, comprises this dissertation’s first unit. The first chapter in this unit, titled “A Planned Migration,” explores the period that these groups spent preparing for the Kalmyks’ arrival. The second, titled “Placing Refugee Workers,” focuses the implementation of this planning, telling the story of how their resettlement actually proceeded. Together, these chapters ask: In the year spent planning and overseeing the Kalmyks’ resettlement in the United States, how (and by whom and why) was the question of what would make an appropriate settlement for the Kalmyks decided? Who was empowered to decide this, and why did they decide it in the way that they did? How was it implemented? In other words, for the Kalmyks and for those who

29 For example, Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water.

16 orchestrated their resettlement, what was the purpose of their resettlement and who should it serve?

These questions get us to two things at once. On one hand, they ask us to uncover the history of the Kalmyks’ migration to the United States. This history has been mentioned in denominational accounts, newspaper articles, and anthropological studies of the Kalmyk American community over the past half of a century, and it has been kept alive within the Kalmyk American community itself, but it has not been the subject of formal historical inquiry. Outside of the Kalmyk American community, this history is all but entirely unknown, even by immigration historians and scholars of Asian American history.30 In exploring this history, these chapters are a work of social history. They emerge in a tradition of historical scholarship that places the places the lives and experiences of ordinary people at the center of historical inquiry, and they take up the call by women’s historians and scholars of ethnic studies that historians should direct their attention to the lives and experiences of societies’ most oppressed: to the groups and

30 For newspaper articles, see Mary Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” Harper’s Magazine, August 1954; Ralph Reppert, “A Buddhist Shangri-La in the United States,” The Baltimore Sunday Sun Magazine, February 16, 1958, 16; Ruth E. Early, “The Kalmucks: Strangers No More,” Messenger, May 1977. For accounts circulated in the Kalmyk American community, Naia Cucukov, The Haven – Revisited (Naia Cucukov, 2003), vhs, given to the author by Robert Lee; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; “Mongol History: Kalmyk in the USA (1960s),” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFntJRBKc0 (accessed on August 1, 2012); “Kalmuck Home,” http://khalmig.org/ (accessed June 5, 2012); Kalmyk Brotherhood Society, http://www.kalmykphilly.org/ (accessed October 30, 2012); Kalmyk American Society, http://www.kalmykamericansociety.org/ (accessed December 8, 2009). While various anthropologists have studied the Kalmyks and one even moved to Philadelphia during their first years in the United States for extensive participant observation, the primary published study is Paula G Rubel, The Kalmyk Mongols: A Study in Continuity and Change (Indiana University, 1967). On the anthropologist who lived with the Kalmyks during the 1950s, Mary Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” Harper’s Magazine, August 1954. There are two mentions of the Kalmyks in academic scholarship outside of anthropology: a conference presentation, Rudy Busto, “Does Religion Trump Race?: Kalmyk Mongol Buddhists in Diaspora” (Paper presented at the Global and Local Dimensions of Asian America: An International Conference on Asian , San Francisco, CA, 2002); and a short section in a PhD dissertation on Baltic Displaced Persons, “Testing the Boundaries of the Cold War American Nation: The Case of Kalmuk D.P.s,” in Bernard John Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims: Baltic Displaced Persons and the Making of Cold War America, 1945-1952,” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2008, 152–9.

17 communities who were marginalized in their time, who remain so in dominant historical narratives, and whose historical erasures serve dominant systems of power.

At the same time, these questions have the potential to help us wrap our minds around something more abstract: in the Kalmyks’ experience and for the different groups and individuals involved in their migration, what was resettlement? By which I mean, how should we understand the purpose, function, and intended beneficiaries of this state project? The very name we have to talk about this endeavor eludes understanding.

Vacuuming power from the project, the language of resettlement posits this project as the act of re-settling a presumably unsettled person. It becomes a technical solution to an objective problem. To the contrary, the task of what is referred to as resettlement is the task of planning and implementing the terms of a person’s life: it is a regime of immigrant social control. Previously, U.S. immigration policy was largely concerned with issues surrounding individuals’ right to enter and remain in the United States (for example, issues of admissions, naturalization and deportation), but for refugees, the state entered this realm of more formally and directly overseeing of their lives once they arrived. The 1948 Displaced Persons Act was the nation’s first immigration law to admit persons on the basis of their refugee status, and its provisions and practices surrounding their so-called resettlement marked a radical juncture in U.S. immigration policy. It precipitated the development of a massive refugee resettlement regime that consisted not only of state actors—including the first ever federal resettlement agency—but of hundreds of thousands of private groups and individuals who were deputized as its government-sanctioned administrators. What was the purpose and function of this project? How did people approach it? While other historians have observed that the

18 advent of resettlement policy marked a “sea change” in U.S. immigration policy, we know very little about it. Most policy-based historical studies are concerned with admissions policies, rather than resettlement, and the few works that do focus squarely on resettlement generally take an uncritical or even celebratory approach.31

Together, these chapters bring out what was hinted at by the debacle at the Port of

Bremen. I argue that in the Kalmyks’ experience and as their resettlers’ approached it, resettlement was the task of turning them into cheap laborers for the nation’s most marginalized economic sectors. It was a task that was entirely under the purview of white

Americans, not the Kalmyks, and it was brought about by a triad of religious, governmental, and business organizations and interests. In addition to a labor placement project, the Kalmyks’ resettlement was simultaneously many other things. Most starkly, their resettlement was a moral and religious project. It was one implemented by religious groups and others who saw themselves as motivated by moral imperatives and who had real stakes in the moral and religious outcomes and implications of the endeavor. At the same time, it was a coercive project. Their comportment as workers was to be carefully surveilled, and their assimilation was to be deliberately orchestrated. From pressure to threats to the creation of financial dependency, coercive measures were used when the

Kalmyks pushed back against the uneven power dynamics, against the denial of their right to self-determination, and against their resettlers’ specific vision for their lives and work. Finally, their resettlement was also a racial project. The fact that they were a group

31 For “sea change,” Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107. The major policy-based studies of refugee history include Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness; Bill Ong Hing, “The Politics of Asylum,” in Defining America through Immigration Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press Philadelphia, 2004), 233–258; Tempo, Americans at the Gate; Norman L Zucker and Naomi Flink Zucker, The Guarded Gate: The Reality of American Refugee Policy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987). For an example of a celebratory work on resettlement, Richard Solberg, Open Doors: The Story of Lutherans Resettling Refugees (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House, 1992).

19 of color influenced resettlers’ decisions at every turn, including their vision for them as workers. For the Kalmyks, the task of resettlement was not the task of orchestrating the lives of any group of European refugees, but of deciding how refugees of color would fit into the American scene. Crucially, these two chapters show how the visioning and implementation of their resettlement as a labor migration was tied up in each of these other aims and imperatives.

Not only that they were Buddhist and Asian, but from the fact that they migrated to the United States as a group to the specific governmental and religious groups involved in their resettlement, much about the Kalmyks’ experience was out of the ordinary. Yet the idea that resettlement should serve the nation’s economic interests had deeper institutional roots. So do many of the other themes that come out in this first unit, from the notion that resettlement should involve the careful orchestration of refugees’ assimilation to the sense that , not refugees themselves, were the rightful beneficiaries of this state project, to the centrality of race, religion and ideas about morality in the making of the U.S. resettlement system.

Taking up the idea that the experiences of those on the fringe often provide the clearest light to illuminate the larger fabric, this dissertation uses the Kalmyks’ experiences as a jumping off point to explore the formations of U.S. refugee resettlement as it came into being during the years after World War II.32 In other words, we begin with the Kalmyks not because theirs is a perfectly representative case study, but because this resettlement project—both in the ways that it was exceptional and in the ways that it was not—opens up new understandings the origins of U.S. refugee resettlement. After

32 On how Asian American history sheds light on U.S. history more broadly, Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams (University of Washington Press, 1994).

20 zooming in on the Kalmyks, this dissertation zooms out. The following five macrohistorical chapters demonstrate that various sectors of the U.S. resettlement regime—from religious aid agencies to government officials to proponents and opponents of the law to the admissions act itself—envisioned refugee resettlement as an economic project. Theoretically, refugees were moral subjects: the victims of state persecution who are admitted on a moral basis. But in practice they were treated as semi-coerced imported laborers: they were low-cost, exploitable workers who were to serve the nation’s economic interests. Resettlement was envisioned this way, legislated this way and enforced this way.

In addition to an economic project, the U.S. refugee program, just like the

Kalmyks’ migration, served various other purposes and outcomes: It was a foreign policy decision intended to tell a story about the morality of U.S. global power, to aid the reconstruction of the Europe in the service of U.S. interests, and to strike a blow against

Soviet power. It was a site of church formation for religious groups. Almost fully implemented by private religious groups, resettlement was intended to—and indeed resulted in—the catalyzing of denominational growth, the solidification of religious groups’ imbrications in government affairs, and the expansion of their control over national immigration policy, not to mention the religious conversion of tens of thousands of refugees. It was also a carefully constructed Americanization project, one in which immigrants’ assimilation was to be subtly yet deliberately coerced and surveilled by private groups operating as state actors. And it was, if less intuitively but just as crucially, a racial project and a gendered project.

21

Yet while resettlement functioned as many things at once, it was also a labor migration. In the view of the organizations that lobbied for the law, the legislators who wrote it, the government agencies and sectarian NGOs that administered it, and according to the law itself, DPs were workers. The task of resettlement was to place these workers in jobs, and to do so in a way that would maximize the benefits to American employers and the American economy. Legally, socially, and culturally, refugees were “entrants:” non-citizen subjects with only provisional authorization to enter and remain in the United

States and whose value was correlated to their laboring capacity and willingness to submit to state technologies of surveillance and control. The figure of the DP centered on questions of employability and their expected comportment as laboring bodies and as subjects of the state. And while this labor program was markedly different than the other foreign labor programs of the decade—namely, the Bracero, H-2 and POW labor programs—these programs provided critical precedents and institutional structures that made the DP labor migration what it was.

In explaining how resettlement emerged as a labor placement project, this dissertation does not downplay its other attributes. To the contrary, it focuses on the critical connections between resettlement’s economic formations and these other imperatives and functions: assimilatory, geopolitical, moral, religious, racial, gendered and vis-à-vis other labor programs directed at non-citizen subjects. I argue that resettlement’s conceptualization, creation and implementation as a labor migration was tied up in each of these other attributes. In parsing the relationships between resettlement’s various attributes and imperatives, this dissertation considers how these critical, constitutive connections radically shift our understanding of what resettlement

22 was. And indeed, what emerges is a reformulation of accepting understandings of resettlement as a state project and as a technology of governance.

In making these connections, this dissertation builds on the vast body of scholarship about the mutual constitution of social formations, making this the first study to bring this approach to the study of U.S. resettlement policy. This creative and critical approach also builds upon a small but growing body of work referred to as the new refugee studies or critical refugee studies.33 To date, none of these studies have taken an explicitly policy-based approach and none focus on post-World War II refugees.

Moreover, these studies are rare exceptions in the broader field of refugee studies. The vast majority of refugee scholarship has not been influenced by cultural studies, ethnic studies, critical legal theory, postcolonial studies and new frameworks in immigration history, such as transnationalism. As such—and as a result of the fact that refugee history emerged in the same nationalist framework as immigration history and due to the undue influence of the refugee regime itself on writing this history—they often uphold a number of nationalist tenants and assumptions.

This dissertation’s five macrohistorical chapters are divided into three units. The first of these units focuses on the social movement for refugee admissions that preceded the passage of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. The next explores the legal frameworks established by this Act, and the last explores its implementation, including the institutional structures and practices that emerged from it. All three units pay careful

33 Important studies focusing on resettlement include Sara L. McKinnon, “Unsettling Resettlement: Problematizing ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ Resettlement and Identity,” Western Journal of Communication 72, no. 4 (October 2008): 397–414; Mimi Thi Nguyen, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages (Duke University Press Books, 2012); Aihwa Ong, Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (Berkeley: University of Press, 2003); Eric Tang, “Unsettled: On the Postcolonial Presence of Southeast Asian Refugees,” PhD diss., New York University, 2006.

23 attention to resettlement’s discursive and ideological frameworks, and each of the constituent chapters focus on a specific question or set of connections. In other words, these chapters focus on specific sites and questions, rather than attempting an exhaustive accounting of state policy.

This methodology offer several benefits. The targeted focus enables us to flesh out the complexities of refugee resettlement’s constitution as a labor migration, and in doing so, we are able to see how U.S. refugee policy and practice emerged not simply from the letter of the law and not even simply from the U.S. state itself, but from an entanglement of ideologies, legal frameworks, institutional structures and practices, as well as from the actions of a range of different kinds of historical actors: from activists to nativists, capitalists to workers, and private organizations to public agencies. In painting a rich portrait of the range levels and ways in which U.S. refugee resettlement policy was constituted, this approach adheres to a more accurate accounting of how states are constituted than is often conveyed by more traditional policy-based studies. As David

Theo Goldberg explains, states are not discrete entities. Instead, they are fluid and internally fractured and “encompass the complex, nuanced and subtle entanglement of identity processes, cultural and commodity flows, and state institutions, apparatuses and functions.”34 And finally, in beginning with a microhistory, we are able to see how individuals operated within larger structural, political, institutional and cultural contexts.

Doing so “peoples” this history, meaning it keeps the lives of real people at the center of

34 David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 4.

24 this inquiry, and it enables us to link historical levels without reducing individual experiences to mere examples of larger phenomena.35

Each of the macrohistorical chapters focuses on themes that emerged from the exploration of the Kalmyk resettlement project. The goal is not necessarily—or not simply—to provide context for understanding the Kalmyks’ experiences, but to make independent arguments about these themes and to do so from a macrohistorical lens focused on national policy. Drawing out the connections to the Kalmyk’s resettlement is not the project of each chapter. These connections are instead drawn out in the proceeding pages along with summaries of each chapter’s arguments.

…

The first of the macrohistorical chapters, which is the dissertation’s third chapter, lays the basic groundwork for the proceeding chapters by exploring the rootedness of

DPs’ construction as workers and resettlement as a labor placement project. Titled

“Refugee Advocates and the Promotion of Refugee Admissions as a Labor Importation,” it focuses on the 1946-1948 campaign spearheaded by the Citizen’s Committee on

Displaced Persons to bring about a Congressional immigration act for displaced persons.

This chapter makes the case that DPs were configured as workers from the very inception of the notion that Congress might admit them. And further, that they were configured as workers not simply by those who sought to exploit them, but by their most ardent supporters, persons who were not themselves motivated by economic aims, a fact which is striking in its parallel to the Kalmyks’ experience of having their labor migration planned and enforced largely by humanitarian and religious groups and individuals, not

35 Anton Froeyman, “Concepts of Causation in Historiography,” Historical Methods 42, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 126; Szijártó I., “Four Arguments for Microhistory,” Rethinking History 6, no. 2 (2002): 209–215.

25 by business groups. Additionally, this chapter reveals that the framing of resettlement as a state-sponsored labor migration emerged from a deliberate and strategic political campaign, while also making clear that this framing had deeper ideological, historical, geopolitical and political contexts. Finally, the chapter concludes by bringing out how, for not just the Kalmyks but all European refugees, DPs were figured as farm and domestic workers. I make the case that in emphasizing these sectors, refugee advocates deliberately framed resettlement as an endeavor in which refugees would be treated as a source of low cost, exploitable labor to be funneled into the nation’s most marginal economic sectors.

In making these arguments, this dissertation fills a gap in existing scholarship. To be sure, others have certainly pointed out that policymakers emphasized that the DP migration should benefit the nation’s economic interests. After all, these intentions were stated outright in the policy debates and public discourse surrounding this migration. Yet while this fact is acknowledged in the relatively robust body of scholarship on the DP migration, it is done only in passing, as if it does not necessarily merit further interrogation or analysis. Only cursory attention has been paid to the reason for this emphasis and to the contexts in which it emerged, much less to what this emphasis says about resettlement was, meaning how we conceptualize of it as a state project.36 Not just the DP migration, the economic intentions, ideologies and structures of refugee policy have received scant attention by historians of any refugee migration during the twentieth

36 Dinnerstein, 131, 144, 150; Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 66; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 11-3; Maegi “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 167-75, 237.

26 century, despite the fact that economic and policy-based approaches have long played a predominating role in the study of U.S. immigration more generally.

Chapter Four continues this exploration of how the social movement for DP admissions constructed DP as workers. Pulling out another thread from the Kalmyks’ resettlement, it focuses specifically on the meanings, intentions, strategy and implications embedded in this movements’ insistence that DPs would be funneled into the farm and domestic labor sectors. For the Kalmyks, this theme was prominent at every step of their resettlement: the attempt to force them to live in New Mexico was an attempt to compel them to become farm and domestic workers. It was resettlers’ main focus when they set about finding them specific placements, and it was the source of much consternation and dissent among the Kalmyks—consternation and dissent that eventually became the basis of a community campaign to wrest control of their own lives and work. In the Kalmyks’ experience, their resettlers’ insistence that they become farm and domestic workers was in part about economic priorities and alliances and the desire to exploit them. But this insistence was also about ensuring that they would not be perceived as labor competition with native-born white Americans. (These sectors, after all, were dominated by immigrants and people of color.) It was about ensuring that this group of persons who were Asian, Russian, non-English speaking and practiced what was seen as a strange religion would not form a visible or viable ethnic enclave in a populated region where white Americans might notice them. It was, for reasons that are tied up in the ideological understandings of working in these sectors, seen as a means of forcing their assimilation and marginalizing the unassimilable. And finally, it was an act of racial formation: it was

27 an act of putting them in their proper racial role and it was one that stemmed from their resettlers’ ideas about the Kalmyks’ racial character.

In exploring the figure of the DP as a farmer or domestic worker in pro- admissions discourse, this chapter, which is titled “Maids and Farmhands: The

Construction of Refugee Resettlement as an Endeavor to Force DPs’ Assimilation,

Exploit their Labor, and Exclude Jews,” exposes a parallel phenomenon in broader discourse and policymaking, bringing out on a structural level what was seen on for the

Kalmyks. For the Kalmyks and for white European DPs—but in different ways in respect to their different racial formations—the emphasis on them as farm and domestic workers was connected to issues of race, coercion, and assimilation. In this chapter, I argue that the emerging figure of the refugee as a farm or domestic laborer was, at its origins, tied up in the effort to exclude Jews and force the assimilation of all others. In suggesting that the United States would preferentially admit farmers and domestic workers, proponents of DP admissions meant to suggest that the United States would preferentially admit non-

Jews. And in claiming that resettlement would function as a labor placement project in these sectors, they effectively mollified concerns that DPs would form ethnic communities in large cities, that they would resist assimilation, and that they would take jobs from white Americans. Advocates framed DPs and resettlement as such because it offered a tidy solution—it was a means of simultaneously diffusing a range of nativist objections.

This exploration of the farms and domestic labor focus in advocate discourse also brings out how the beneficiaries of resettlement as a state project were assumed from the very start to be white Americans, rather than refugees. Further, I argue that it was

28 precisely these sectors’ racialization, marginalization and exploitativeness that accounted for advocates’ decision to promote them, and crucially, that their willingness to frame resettlement as such was integral to the success of their publicity campaign and by extension, to the passage of the immigration act itself. The chapter concludes with a case study of how the CCDP and other pro-admissions activists convinced the American

Legion to support this measure, a history that helps to bring out the relative importance of the various meanings tied up in the farm and domestic labor focus and that underscores the extent to which the passage of the law was contingent on this framing.

Making sense of the focus on the farm and domestic labor sectors is important for a number of reasons. Not just for the Kalmyks, this framing—and the racial and assimilatory things that it was supposed to bring about—was central to the story of how and why DP admissions was constructed as a labor migration. It is crucial to understanding DPs’ racial formation and to understanding the law itself, and it renders visible the connections between resettlements’ racial, coercive and economic formations.

Other scholars have noted that policymakers figured DPs as either farmers or domestic workers, but if they interrogate this framing, they generally focus on only one of its purposes. Leonard Dinnerstein’s America and the Survivors of the Holocaust exposes this framing’s anti-Semitic purposes and meanings, and Bernard Maegi’s “Dangerous

Persons, Delayed Pilgrims” explores the role of discourse about agricultural jobs in DPs’ racial formation.37 In bringing together the many meanings bundled together in conversations about DP farmers and domestic workers, this chapter builds upon, expands, and ultimately complicates these assessments. While the next chapter continues this

37 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 131, 167; Maegi “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 167-75, 237.

29 exploration by focusing on the law itself, I chose to first establish these connections within advocate discourse in order to make clear that discursive foundations of this framing were first established by refugee advocates—persons who claimed that the

United States would differentially select DPs who were farmworkers or maids and that regardless, DPs would be funneled into these sectors, but whose favored bill contained no measures to do so—not by the nativists who ultimately wrote the 1948 Displaced Persons

Act.

This dissertation’s next unit turns to this law. Beginning with Dinnerstein’s foundational study, other historians have explored the multiple valences of this law’s anti-Semitism and restrictionism. This was a law that appeared to welcome refugees but in fact contained extensive and intentional hurdles obstructing refugees’ entry.38 Titled

“Workers by Law,” this dissertation’s fifth chapter adds to this existing scholarship while bringing out what has heretofore been ignored: how the 1948 Displaced Persons Act constructed DPs as workers and how it mandated their treatment as such. This chapter focuses on the elements of the law that were explicitly concerned with DPs as workers, namely the quota for agricultural workers, the employment preference system, and the requirement that each refugee must have a written assurance from a voluntary agency that they would not become public charges and that they would be suitably employed and housed without displacing an American from a job or housing. I argue that these measures resulted in a law that admitted DPs according to their laboring capacities, that mandated that they would work upon arrival, and that they would do so in jobs and in

38 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 164-182; Divine, American Immigration Policy, 1924-1952 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 122-129; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 19-22; Maegi, America’s Fair Share, 77-79; Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, 28-29.

30 locations that they could not choose freely and according to terms that they could not control.

The way that this jobs mandate was structured had a foundational impact on the development of the U.S. refugee resettlement system: what emerged from it was a resettlement system in which job placements were (and continue to be) the core task of resettlement, and in which private groups, namely religious organizations, were (and are) the primary padrones in this labor placement project. These provisions also had a foundational impact on regular immigration law, meaning the laws pertaining to persons who are classified as immigrants, not refugees. While the connection between productivity and national belonging has a longer history, the notion that economic preferences should play a primary role in immigrants’ selection and that their eligibility to stay in the United States should be contingent on their staying in a specific job for a certain period of time—both have become normative components of U.S. immigration law, and in large part, they owe their origins to the 1948 Displaced Persons Act.

Further, this chapter argues that in addition to legislating DP admissions as a labor placement project, these provisions simultaneously served several other purposes. As the chapter explains, these provisions’ intention and implication was to exclude Jews, to force other DPs’ dispersal and assimilation, to mandate their exploitation, and more generally, to make the law difficult to implement. These provisions legislated each of these impacts into being at once, which means that there were constitutive connections between the law’s racial, economic and coercive components. This argument makes several important interventions in accepted ways of interpreting this law. First, it pushes back against the accepted understanding of the law’s economic components as mere foils

31 for their anti-Semitism.39 Second, it brings to the fore the centrality of the assurance system and its non-displacement clauses in this law. While historians acknowledge that the assurance system marked a watershed in U.S. immigration policy, there has been little thorough analysis of its structure and implications, and no attention has been paid to central importance of its non-displacement requirements.40 Third, it makes clear that this was a law that was obfuscated by design and that contained planks that simultaneously accomplished many things at once, an observation that opens up a broader exploration of the law than has been attempted to date. And fourth, this argument means that the structure of the U.S. refugee resettlement system, a structure that remains to the present day, was, at its origins, rooted in racism, exploitation and oppression.

Chapter Six, “Constitutive Connections: Patriarchal Families, Moral Economies,

Religious Work/ers and the DP Labor Migration,” continues this critical legal analysis of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. Here, we focus on several elements that do not on face value seem to be about jobs or labor: the law’s patriarchal family structure; the moral significance associated with refugee resettlement and the impact of these moral formations on the law; and resettlement’s religious formations, including the religious meaning it was meant to convey and religious organizations’ role its administration. This chapter argues that each of these three elements helped to constitute how this refugee migration functioned as a labor migration.

In the first section, I make the case that the DP migration was a labor migration in which workers were treated not just as individuals but as members of nuclear patriarchal

39 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 131, 167; Maegi, “Displaced Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 167.

40 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107-112; Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, 103-104.

32 families, in which these families were treated as economic units, and in which the labor of this familial economic unit exceeded the sum of its constituent parts and even exceeded the material. The family structure influenced how it could function as a labor migration, including the kinds of jobs that persons were given. It worked to amplify the discrimination that DP women would face on the job market, and it led to the exclusion of some who were otherwise eligible to enter the United States, despite the fact that this fundamental fact about the DP migration has historically been used to set U.S. refugee resettlement apart from other U.S. labor programs and from other nations’ refugee policies.

In the second section’s exploration of resettlement’s moral formations and stakes,

I argue that these imperatives mandated that this would be a labor migration that was obfuscated by necessity. I explore the legal acrobatics of obfuscation in the law itself, and

I show how each aspect of obfuscation impacted how this migration could function as a labor migration. In the third section’s analysis of the religious formations of resettlement,

I demonstrate the connection between the law’s religious structure and its moral valences, and I argue that the moralized understanding of this endeavor also helped to create a supply of unpaid resettlement workers in the form of churches, religious organizations and individuals who were invested in the structures of feeling and the material, ideological and church formation outcomes afforded by resettling refugees. These organizations and individuals then became the primary padrones in this labor migration, and their role as such influenced the character of this labor migration and compelled assimilation, impacting the kind of jobs that refugees were given and how the state was able to orchestrate their dispersal and acculturation. At the same time, religious groups’

33 role at the center of the project enabled the obfuscation of these very imperatives, hence enabling this economic work while upholding resettlement’s moral economy. I conclude this chapter by suggesting a model through which historians might understand the intertwined impacts and functions of these various forces, and I argue that religious resettlers were the critical cog that made this migration work and that made it work the way that it did.

One of the primary purposes of many of the foundational studies of U.S. resettlement policy has been to uncover the national self-interest precipitating U.S. refugee resettlement policy. These works expose the “calculations” behind the

“kindness,” to use the language of Gil Loescher and John Scanlan’s foundational study of twentieth-century U.S. refugee policy. While exposing policymakers’ and the government’s self-interestedness, these studies, which include not only Loescher and

Scanlan’s Calculated Kindness but also Carl Bon Tempo’s Americans at the Gate: The

United States and Refugees During the Cold War and Norman Zucker and Naomi Flink

Zucker’s The Guarded Gate: The Reality of American Refugee Policy, among others, have left other historical actors unscathed. Their latent assumption is that for certain segments of the U.S. refugee regime, namely churches and other humanitarian organizations as well as individual volunteers, refugee resettlement was a purely benevolent endeavor.41

This chapter intervenes in this scholarship in several ways: On the one hand it opens up a broader approach to understanding resettlement’s moral economy. Instead of beginning and ending the analysis by pointing out the disingenuousness of policymakers’

41 Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness; Carl J. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate; Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate.

34 moral imperatives and opting against taking a similar either-or approach to analyzing non-governmental resettlers (for example, interrogating if resettlers were selfish or selfless), it suggests that we ask other questions. In this case, how did resettlement’s moral economy impact its economic formations? In answering this question, this chapter clarifies that these deeper political and economic motives were not limited to specific historical actors, but were concretized into law and into the very structure of the U.S. resettlement system, an argument that pushes back against any tendency to locate these formations solely in the past or solely on a discrete group of actors. In exploring the connections between resettlement’s moral and religious formations, this chapter not only further expands our understanding of the complicated work done by resettlement’s moral formations but also brings to the fore the groups that have been left uninterrogated by existing scholarship and who had such an influence on resettlement as we know it: the various religious charities and humanitarian agencies that implemented this project.42 The use of religious organizations as refugees’ resettlers marked a significant departure in immigration policy. While private organizations had long provided social services for immigrants, as well as programs aimed at immigrant social control, these resettlement activities were privately administered, not required by law. As a government report put it, the use of religious and humanitarian groups to administer this Act was “an experiment in

42 Not only in the major monographs, there is scant critical analysis of religious groups’ role in refugee resettlement by any academic source. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “Introduction: Faith-Based Humanitarianism in Contexts of Forced Displacement,” Journal of Refugee Studies 24, no. 3 (September 1, 2011): 429–439; Stephanie J. Nawyn, “Making a Place to Call Home: Refugee Resettlement Organizations, Religion and the State,” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2006, 1512–3; Robert G. Wright, “Voluntary Agencies and the Resettlement of Refugees,” International Migration Review 15, no. 1/2 (April 1, 1981): 167–8; Nicole Ives, “More Than a ‘Good Back’: Looking for Integration in Refugee Resettlement,” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 24, no. 2 (June 1, 2007): 60.

35 new relationships between Government and private agencies.”43 This experiment was long lasting. It “developed a new pattern of immigration, focused a coordinated community approach to immigrants, and welded together religious, nationality and welfare groups, and public and private agencies,” the report concluded.44 In exploring their role, this dissertation is one of the first to take a critical lens to the deep imbrication of religious groups in this federally-sanctioned Americanization project.

The final unit comes full circle, returning to the question of how resettlement policy was implemented. While we first made sense of this as it played out for the

Kalmyks, Chapter Seven offers a case study in the macro-level administration of this law.

Titled “By the End and From the Start, A Story of Structural Choices,” this chapter turns to the regulatory and administrative practices of the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission and of individual state-level DPCs, which were independent state commissions created to oversee the DP migration to their respective state. This chapter shows that over the course of this four-year migration, the national and state-level DPCs worked to implement refugee resettlement as a more effective agricultural and domestic labor placement scheme. Focusing on several key administrative decisions and procedural changes, my analysis of the U.S. DPC suggests that its commissioners transformed the refugee migration into a labor migration almost despite themselves and despite their intentions otherwise. Most state commissions, on the other hand, set out from the start to maximize resettlement’s efficacy as a labor migration. Comprised of volunteer

43 As the DPC acknowledged, the assurance was a “novel departure in the field of immigration.” United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report 92.

Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 113-4; Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107- 112; and for quote United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 294.

44 Ibid, and for quote United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 211.

36 commissioners, generally business and religious leaders, as well as representatives from state departments of agriculture and employment, their entire purpose was to make this national program work for their respective state’s interests, economic or otherwise.

Drawing connections with the previous chapter’s analysis of religious resettlers, I suggest that the influence given to these agencies is indicative of how the underfunded, privatized

U.S. resettlement system deputized those with vested interests in controlling its outcome.

This chapter argues that for both types of DPCs, their foundational administrative and regulatory choices were connected to the structure of the U.S. resettlement system.

Or as I put it in the chapter, theirs were “structural choices.” My emphasis on the relationship between the choices that individuals and organizations make and the regimes of power under which they operate is a theme not only in this chapter, but throughout this dissertation. The unit on the Kalmyks shows how individual resettlers and volagencies functioned within larger systems of power, and it sheds light on refugees’ lived experience of these power dynamics and on how they worked within these dynamics to gain control over their own lives. The exploration of the social movement for refugee admissions reveals the relations of power and structural considerations behind the active decision to frame DPs as workers. The chapters on the 1948 Displaced Persons Act parse this Act’s legal structures, making sense of the considerations that engendered these obfuscated legal structures and of the structural preferences that these provisions created.

This final unit on the DPCs addresses these questions head on, exploring how institutions themselves function within larger institutional contexts. Together, these analyses present a nuanced portrait of the complicated co-existence of both structure and agency, in

37 contrast to what has become an all too common academic practice of holding up the existence of one in order to subtly discount the other.

Another recurrent theme in this dissertation and throughout each chapter is the connection between U.S. refugee resettlement and other mid-twentieth-century labor programs for foreign nationals, namely the Bracero, H-2 and POW labor programs. I show that these programs provided institutional precedents for the mass labor placement and population management project proposed for refugees. They created demographic, material and ideological conditions that led to the promotion of and focus on the domestic and agricultural labor sectors. They informed the structure of the law itself, and the recurrent specter of these programs was critical to refugees’ racial formation. There were also crucial material and institutional connections: resettlers worked in tandem with the local agencies and business leaders who implemented these contract labor programs, and many refugees came to work alongside guest workers or in positions formerly held by prisoners of war. To be sure, there were stark contrasts between the programs. The economic, legal and social conditions faced by DPs varied markedly from those confronting Bracero, H-2 and POW workers, as did these groups’ racial formations. My analysis does not conflate these programs, but shows that the DP labor migration emerged in the context of these other programs.

Drawing out the connections between these programs impels a potentially powerful re-thinking of refugee resettlement. It is commonly understood that the Bracero and H-2 Programs were labor recruitment programs in which the intended beneficiaries were American employers. For the United States, the intention was always economic, never moral, and the Mexican and Caribbean migrants who entered the United States

38 through these programs were seen as low cost workers, not deserving subjects.45 In contrast, stark moral assumptions underwrote popular and legal understandings of U.S. refugee policy, and they continue to do so. In the post-World War II period throughout the twentieth century and to the present day, refugee admissions have been configured as emerging from purer motives than normal immigration law: from the United States’ commitment to human freedom and essentially, from its inherently moral core. There is a general understanding that refugee policy has not been so pure in practice, but the scholarship still relies on a distinction between the two kinds of policies. The two have never been compared, and doing so has the potential to powerfully unsettle latent assumptions coloring existing studies of refugee policy.46

In challenging the distinction made between refugee admissions and guest worker programs, this dissertation also carries present day political implications. In the U.S. asylum system, the central question of asylum adjudications has become: is the applicant a bone fide refugee, or is he or she an economic migrant?47 Weeding out fraudulent applicants and detecting “economic migrants” transformed into the primary goal of the

45 Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992); Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

46 Daniel Tichenor’s Dividing Lines makes an intervention in the direction of comparing the refugee program to other mid-century labor migrations, but his analysis does not trouble the distinction between the two categories of entrants. Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton University Press, 2002), 150–175. For two studies that exemplify how comparative approaches to other post-WWII labor migrations have unsettled traditional distinctions, Barbara Schmitter Heisler, “The ‘Other Braceros’: Temporary Labor and German Prisoners of War in the United States, 1943- 1946,” Social Science History 31, no. 2 (2007): 239; Lilia Fernandez, “Of Immigrants and Migrants: Mexican and Puerto Rican Labor Migration in Comparative Perspective, 1942–1964,” Journal of American Ethnic History 29, no. 3 (Winter 2010); for the classic distinction made between refugees and immigrants, Liisa Malkki, “Refugees and Exile”, 496; and for an example of this, Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, xiv–xvi.

47 A refugee is a person fleeing persecution or the well-founded fear of persecution, not generalized violence and certainly not economic violence.

39

U.S. asylum service during the 1980s, and the system remains extremely restrictive and suspicious of asylum applicants. Any suspicion that an applicant wants to improve their financial condition in the United States, regardless of the other circumstances that impelled their migration, is enough for their case to be dismissed out of hand. Over the past decades, the notion that applicants were “economic migrants” has been used to justify the rejection of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of refugees, mostly people of color, including the mass asylum denials of Haitians, Salvadorans and Guatemalans.48

In fleshing out this history of the economic origins of U.S. refugee policy, this dissertation makes the case that the United States government, not fraudulent refugee claimants, has been the primary violator of U.S. refugee policy’s supposed moral bearings. It was the U.S. state, not refugees, that sought to use refugee admissions for economic gain, and this intention was not a one-time matter, but is written into the very structure of the resettlement system. As such, this history offers a usable past: it is a counter-origins story to the dominant narrative of who violates the sanctity of U.S. refugee and asylum policy. It unsettles these deep-rooted moralized assumptions about the nature of this realm of policy. It calls into question the stark distinctions between refugee and immigration policy, and for that matter, the subjects thereof. Indeed, the only difference between a refugee and an immigrant or between an asylee and a so-called

“illegal alien” is a legal determination.

…

48 The number is in the millions if one accounts for persons who did bother to apply for asylum because of the difficult odds. See Bill Ong Hing for how distinguishing bona fide refugees from economic migrants became the primary goal of the asylum service. This fact was also popularized in the 1990 documentary Well-Founded Fear. Hing, Defining America through Immigration Policy, 239–258; Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini, Well-Founded Fear, dvd (POV, 2000).

40

The legacy of the resettlement system established after WWII has been long lasting, not only in complex and unexpected ways, but on the most fundamental level. In

2008, I interviewed John Backer, a veteran staff member of the religious voluntary agency Church World Service (CWS) who recalled working with the Kalmyks not too long after he began with the agency in 1949. While our conversation centered on CWS resettlement practices after World War II, when I left, he gifted me a documentary film produced by CWS about their resettlement practices in the 2000s. So little has changed, he mused, that if I wanted to learn about resettlement 60 years ago, I needed only to learn about resettlement today.49 Indeed, the basic procedure for resettling refugees has changed very little since it was first put in place after World War II. Refugees are matched with a voluntary agency, predominantly the same ones functioning then, and their sponsoring voluntary agency determines their location and helps them to find employment. Most are placed in low wage jobs, and they are welcomed into local religious communities, which help them to adjust to American life. And up until the

1990s, it remained standard practice to disperse refugees throughout rural America in order to mandate their disappearance and prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves. All of these procedures, this dissertation will argue, are connected to resettlement’s constitution as an economic project and to its interconnected moral, religious, racial, political and social formations.

Not just institutional structures, DP resettlement created a common sense of what refugees are “for.” It naturalized the idea that refugee admissions rightfully serve the nation’s economic interests, and at the same time, it set in motion a deep obfuscation of

49 Author interview with John Backer, March 2008.

41 this interest. The way that policymakers spoke about Holocaust survivors and other refugees as low wage workers is striking and unsettling in hindsight, but economic interests still inform U.S. resettlement policies and policy debates, and they continue to do so in ways that are not always entirely visible and are rarely seen as troubling. While dressed up as a “gift of freedom,” to use the title of Mimi Thi Nguyen’s forthcoming book, the refugee experience in the United States remains one marked by extreme economic precariousness, not to mention harsh social realities, from racism and nativism to grief and isolation to deep social inequities and a dwindling if nonexistent social safety net. In these and many other ways, the resettlement system created for post-World War II refugees led to foundation of the refugee system as we know it. As such, the history of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act is not a history of one law, but an origins story of the

U.S. resettlement system itself.

There is danger, however, in placing this Act at the center of U.S. refugee history.

While the U.S. resettlement system was first established after World War II and while the basic structures have remained the same, much has changed during the intervening years.

Shortly following the DP migration, in which the Kalmyks were the only refugees of color to enter the United States, the government admitted small numbers of refugees of color under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and through various other one-time measures during the mid- to late-1950s. These refugees included persons from and the

Middle East, as well as mixed-race persons from Indonesia. The demographic breakdown soon shifted more dramatically. First with the exodus out of Cuba beginning in the early

1960s, then with Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodian refugees starting in the mid-1970s, and with Haitians and Central Americans refugees starting in the 1980s, along with

42 increasing numbers of African and Middle Eastern refugees, it gradually came to be that the majority of persons seeking asylum in the United States were not Europeans, but persons of color from the global south. (Throughout this broader period, however, de jure and then de facto racial preferences were nonetheless afforded to refugees from

Europe.)50 While the Kalmyks sat at margins of the DP experience, their experiences nonetheless shed light on broader policies and practices during this period. And in a broader historical context, it was white Europeans, not the Kalmyks, whose experiences constituted the exception. Today, resettlement is a practice administered by organizations comprised largely of Americans who are white and Christian and directed toward refugees who are predominantly people color and of non-Judeo-Christian faith.51

Resettling the “Other” is now the prevailing norm—and refugees today, like the Kalmyks who arrived in the early 1950s, are pervasively Othered by those who agree to help them.

As such, the Kalmyks’ experiences provide a more fitting historical reference point in understanding this longue durée of the U.S. refugee resettlement regime. Theirs is an origins story from the margins.

50 David M. Reimers, “The Unwanted: Third World Refugees,” in Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1985), 155–199.

51 The one exception to this general trend is for refugees who secured sponsorships from relatives, which became more prevalent during the decades after the DP migration.

43

UNIT ONE

Kalmyk Resettlement, 1951-1952

44

CHAPTER ONE

A Planned Migration:

Purposes, Priorities, and Power Dynamics during the Planning Period

The Haven, a 1954 film about the Kalmyks by the United States Information

Agency, ended triumphantly. As the music soared, viewers watched a young Kalmyk

American mother tuck her young children into bed. “Safe after years of suffering, freed of uncertainty and fear, the Kalmyks find a haven. Peaceful, permanent, secure. The

Kalmyks find a home,” the narrator concluded. As the film would have it, this haven and home was brought about by the generosity of American Christians. After sailing past the iconic Statue of Liberty and landing in the astonishing grandeur of New York City, the

Kalmyks were introduced to the Christians who the film suggested were to credit for bringing them to the United States. These benevolent religious leaders then mentored the

Kalmyks through their transition to American life. They were “there to listen,” and they were there to help the Kalmyks “chart their course.” According to the film, these

Christian organizations literally gave the Kalmyks the land on which their houses sat and

45 the loans which enabled them to build them. The Kalmyk family in the film, viewers are told, gave their new home a name: “hope for the future.”1

Not only from American Christians, the Kalmyks’ newfound hope came from the sheer fact of being in the United States. Learning in schools with white American children, The Haven described how Kalmyk children knew stability for the first time in their life. Smiling, healthy Kalmyk men were shown at work as skilled factory laborers, farmers and “business executives”, while their wives spent their days in shiny kitchens cooking meals suited just to their families’ tastes. A neighborhood clinic run by the

Quakers offered free health care, and all with whom they came in contact offered a warm welcome and a deep respect for their culture and religion. Resettlement in the United

States brought religious and political freedom, as well as personal happiness, for the first time in their lives.2

In the context of the racially, religiously and morally charged Cold War, there was powerful propaganda value in depicting the Kalmyks’ resettlement as a generous and benevolent gift from white American Christians and in configuring the United States as a land of freedom, racial equality, and economic prosperity. Not only The Haven, but another piece produced two years earlier by the Marshall Plan Film Corps told the story of how America “opened its doors to the Kalmyks” and gave them a home. Americans

1 “The Haven, Original Production, Produced by Thomas Craven Film Corp.,” Foreign Versions, August 18, 1954, The Haven – English, Series: Movie Scripts, 1942-1965, Records of the U.S. Information Agency, 1900-1992, RG 306, NACP; Thomas Craven Film Corp., The Haven (United States Information Agency, 1954), 35mm filmstrip, 1452 ft, Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division, NACP, posted at http://khalmig.org/.

2 Ibid; John Ferno, “Kalmucks,” Magazine No. 3, Directed by Nelo Risi, 1952 (Mutual Security Agency/Europe, Paris, 1952), 35 mm film, NACP; Norman Mackie, Americans from Jungaria (Princeton Seminars, 1965), filmstrip, 17:57, posted by “Bsqueak”, September 24, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr7LmkwwR8E.

46 from Jungaria, a film for U.S. audiences produced in 1960, would impart a similar message, as did the dozens of newspaper articles and special interest stories written about the Kalmyks during their first years in the United States.

Underneath this thick public propaganda painting a simplified narrative of

American generosity and happy outcomes, how did Americans think about what it meant to resettle the Kalmyks? Drawing on the institutional records of the various organizations that were involved in their resettlement and on the correspondence and personal writings of American aid workers, government officials, Kalmyks leaders, and their U.S. allies,3 this chapter looks at how the various individuals and groups who saw themselves as stakeholders in this project planned for their Kalmyks arrival. Where would they live?

What kinds of jobs would they have? How would they adjust to American life? In other words, what would their lives be like in the United States?

Looking at the history of who was empowered to decide these questions—and who was excluded—sheds light on the power dynamics and purposes structuring U.S. refugee resettlement. And exploring the considerations and interests that informed the different takes on this planned migration reveals how the various stakeholders in the

Kalmyks’ resettlement conceptualized of it as a project, including whose interests it

3 Materials on the Kalmyk resettlement project are located in eight repositories. See bibliography for complete details. The collection “Kalmuck Refugees” (Series 4/1/6) at the Brethren Historical Library and Archives (BHLA) was the richest source of information. This collection consists of approximately fifty file folders of records from the Brethren Service Commission, including memos, correspondence, personal writings, case files, documents, and clippings. The bulk of the correspondence between the Kalmyks and their U.S.-based allies is located in the records of the Kalmyk Resettlement Committee (TAM.029) at New York University’s Tamiment Library/Walter F. Wagner Labor Archives and in the Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers (BAR-KAP) in Columbia University’s Rare Books and Manuscript Collections. The records of Bula and Tom Charles, Church World Service, and the Immigration and Refugee Services of America were also useful (approximately 2 file folders each). Government documents are from various folders titled “Kalmuk Project” located in the Rosenfield Papers at the Truman Library and in several subseries of the Displaced Persons Commission records at the National Archives at College Park (NACP). A handful of documents were from the State Department lot files and central files at NACP.

47 should serve and what its intended outcomes should be. This chapter’s first half focuses on the development of the basic parameters for the Kalmyks’ resettlement. The second half looks at how these guidelines and intentions were turned into concrete plans by the resettlement worker assigned to the task. Together, this exploration of the time spent planning for the Kalmyks’ arrival unveils what the Kalmyks’ resettlement was to their resettlers—not what they claimed it to be, but quite literally, what they deliberately and meticulously planned it to be.

This history renders visible a number of critical truths about the Kalmyks’ resettlement. First, while the Kalmyks’ official, state-sanctioned resettlers were sectarian organizations and individuals who were, to varying extents, motivated by moral convictions and religious values, they oriented themselves primarily as employment officers. Working in collaboration with various national, state and local government agencies (including some that were in the direct business of exploiting Bracero and H-2 workers), this church-state alliance worked in service of, and often directly in tandem with, industry organizations, business leaders and potential employers (organizations and individuals who were themselves also involved in guest worker programs). Offering up the Kalmyks as low cost agricultural and domestic laborers to local ranchers, farmers and business owners, they approached resettlement as if the task of this endeavor was to match refugee workers with employers. The Kalmyks were figured as a source of low- cost labor for these racialized, gendered, and highly exploitative economic sectors, and resettlement was figured as a project in which the rightful beneficiaries were white

Americans, not refugees themselves.

48

Another prominent theme in the Kalmyks’ experience was an insistence by their resettlers on absolute control over the direction of the project and by extension, over the character of the Kalmyks’ lives in the United States, as the task of resettlement is quite literally the task of planning refugees’ new lives and orchestrating their adjustment.

These groups systematically and deliberately cut the Kalmyks out of the decision making process, a power dynamic that the Kalmyks pushed back against as they insisted on their community’s right to self-determination.

In addition to a labor placement project and a coercive project, the Kalmyks’ resettlement—and refugee resettlement in general—was also much more. The negotiations around the Kalmyks’ resettlement shed light on how resettlement was intended as an endeavor that would force refugees’ assimilation and that would prevent the formation of visible ethnic enclaves, an intention that became particularly evident when the Kalmyks’ insisted on migrating together as a group, rather than allowing themselves to be dispersed in nuclear family units throughout the country, as was generally the practice. The plans for the Kalmyks’ resettlement also unveil how resettlement was constructed as a religious and moral project, in the sense that it was implemented by religious institutions and by individuals who were motivated by their religious and moral beliefs or by the opportunity to enact a spectacle of themselves as the benevolent saviors of the victims of Communism and Nazism. Further, as their resettlers’ conversations about reveal, resettlement was also a religious project in the sense that proselytizing was accepted as an integral component of the endeavor and a critical means in which to force refugees’ assimilation and to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves.

49

For the Kalmyks—and in general, but in a different way, as later chapters explore—resettlement was also a racial project. Racism influenced the resettlers’ plans at every step, and it led to the creation of a project in which the aim was to transform the

Kalmyks’ into a very specific sort of racialized and gendered subject: into a more tractable, racially palatable alternative to Mexican and Native American farm and domestic workers. The story of the Kalmyks’ resettlement in the United States brings out on-the-ground intersections between these imperatives, and it opens up this dissertation’s exploration of the larger-scale constitutive connections between these various truths.

Organizational Players in Kalmyk Resettlement

Several years earlier when the Kalmyks appeared to be terminally stuck in the DP camps, the International Refugee Organization elevated their case to a “hard core” case, which meant that this organization was more pointedly and intimately involved in their quest to find a receiving nation than was normally the case. The Kalmyks’ Bureau of

Immigration Affairs appeal was brought forward the IRO itself, and in late July of 1951 when the Kalmyks finally won this case and were declared eligible to enter the United

States, this organization insisted on weighing in on the direction of their U.S. resettlement. However, in eyes of U.S. law, the details of DPs’ resettlement after arriving in the United States were not under the jurisdiction of this international organization. Yet

IRO leaders were able to exert influence over the Kalmyks’ resettlement because they were willing to pledge a substantial amount of money to the project. In a meeting in which neither Kalmyk leaders nor their designated allies were present, IRO Director

General J. Donald Kingsley reached an agreement with Church World Service (CWS)

50 and the Tolstoy Foundation, and it was decided that these organizations would assume joint responsibility for the project.4

Sandcha Stepanow, Badma Oulanoff, Shamba Balinov and other Kalmyks who had direct contact with these agencies in the camps harbored deep skepticism toward them, feeling that CWS and the Tolstoy Foundation had been less than forthcoming allies during their years-long struggle to find an alternative to repatriation.5 Yet while many of the Kalmyks’ closest allies were affiliated with U.S.-based aid organizations, none of these groups—not the Flatbush Unitarian Committee where Knut Halle worked, nor

Russian American Union for Protection and Aid to Russians Outside of Russia of which

Dimitry Kapatzinsky was the president, nor the International Rescue Committee where

David Martin was the Executive Director—were officially designated refugee resettlement agencies. In contrast, both CWS and the Tolstoy Foundation were certified voluntary agencies and both had officially recognized ties to the Kalmyks. The Tolstoy

Foundation, which was an anti-communist Russian émigré group with staff in Germany’s

DP camps, had actually been assigned to the Kalmyks’ case from the start, and CWS, too, had also been involved with their case over the years. While CWS’s involvement had been more marginal, their jurisdiction over the Kalmyks’ resettlement was solidified by the fact that aid workers from this agency worked through the night against a tight July

4 David Elliot to Officers Kalmuk Resettlement Committee, August 8, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; “International Refugee Organization Agreement Between Department of Church World Service, Tolstoy Foundation, Inc. and the International Refugee Organization, Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 12, 1951, Kalmuks, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Matter of Remilev, 4 I&N Dec. 275 (BIA 1951); Stepanow to Halle, July 30, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8–9.

5 For example, various documents from file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA: Knut Halle to Roosevelt, May 4, 1950; Stepanow to Knut Halle, January 27, 1951; Knut Halle to David Martin, January 30, 1951. And from Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML, Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, February 3, 1951.

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31, 1951 deadline to submit the necessary resettlement paperwork for the Kalmyks.

Because Church World Service had filed the necessary paper work with the U.S.

Displaced Persons Commission, from the perspective of U.S. law, they had official jurisdiction over the Kalmyks’ resettlement, despite the fact that the IRO agreement, upon which the funding was contingent, decreed that the Tolstoy Foundation would also take joint responsibility for the project.6

Unlike most volagencies (resettlement agencies), CWS itself did not directly resettle refugees but was instead an umbrella organization that oversaw the activities of twenty-three different subsidiary volagencies, from the Baptist World Alliance to the

Methodist Committee for Overseas Relief.7 CWS delegated the on-the-ground task of resettling the Kalmyks to one of its more liberal constituent volagencies, the Maryland- based Brethren Service Commission, which was the social service and volunteer arm of the Church of the Brethren.8 In accepting responsibility for actually administering the

Kalmyk resettlement project, the Brethren Service Commission became the Kalmyks’ official, state-sanctioned resettlers. As such, the story of the power dynamics structuring

6 Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water; Joseph B. Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to the author by John Backer; “International Refugee Organization Agreement Between Department of Church World Service, Tolstoy Foundation, Inc. and the International Refugee Organization, Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 12, 1951, Kalmuks, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

7 “Church World Service: A Historical Note,” NCC Information Service Newsletter, October 17, 1959, 8, Box 114, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 128-147; Some Basic Principles of Church World Service,” draft statement, October 28, 1954, 2, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

8 Brethren Service Center, “We’re Not Done Yet: A Report on the Church’s Program in Resettling Refugees,” c. mid-1952, file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to David Aberle, folder 1, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Holy Experiment for 1952,” folder 14, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water; Kenneth Morse, New Windsor Center (New Windsor, MD: Brethren Service Center, 1979).

52 the Kalmyks’ resettlement is in large part a story of Brethren Service Commission’s full deputation in the eyes of the U.S. system—albeit in the unusual context of an international agreement that gave other agencies, namely CWS and the Tolstoy

Foundation, some grounds for exerting influence over the project.9

Almost universally, each of the several dozen volagencies that were authorized to administer U.S. refugee resettlement policy under the 1948 Displaced Persons Act took full control over resettlement planning for the refugees in their caseload. The Brethren

Service Commission was no exception. Before taking on the Kalmyk project, they had resettled upwards of 800 DP families, totaling about 2,500 individuals, and for each one of these families, they had independently determined their resettlement locale and other details. They called on other organizations for guidance very rarely, only when specific problems arose, and in that case, generally only Church World Service or their denominational governing board, the General Brotherhood Board10

Yet for the Kalmyks, the Brethren Service Commission did not plan their resettlement on their own, nor simply in collaboration with the Tolstoy Foundation and

Church World Service, as would have been expected given the IRO agreement. Instead,

Brethren Service and CWS solicited the guidance of the U.S. Displaced Persons

Commission, which was the federal agency charged with overseeing volagencies’ resettlement of DPs but which was almost never involved in this level of planning. And

9 “International Refugee Organization Agreement Between Department of Church World Service, Tolstoy Foundation, Inc. and the International Refugee Organization, Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 12, 1951, Kalmuks, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

10 Brethren Service Center, “We’re Not Done Yet: A Report on the Church’s Program in Resettling Refugees,” c. mid-1952, file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Morse, New Windsor Center; Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water.

53 on the recommendation of the DPC, three additional government agencies—the

Department of Agriculture, the United States Employment Service (USES), and the

Department of Labor’s Farm Placement Service (FPS)—were also invited into the fold.

By the early 1950s, these agencies had come to collaborate with the DPC on macro-level planning issues, and their local affiliates often worked with volagencies on the ground, but it was unheard of for ranking officials from the national office to intervene at this level for an individual group of refugees.11

“Unusual, Difficult, Challenging”: Race, Religion, Ethnic Self-Determination and

Brethren Service’s Solicitation of Outside Guidance

Brethren Service and CWS asked for such extensive guidance because they believed that this resettlement project would be “unusual, difficult [and] challenging.”

This assumption may seem counterintuitive, even by their own admission. In general, resettlement agencies needed to solicit funding and volunteers in order to resettle DPs because only minimal financial and administrative support was provided by the DPC and the IRO. For the Kalmyks, however, no such effort would be necessary because the IRO financial support was substantial. Several years earlier, in the throes of the seemingly impossible task of finding a resettlement nation for the Kalmyks, the IRO raised approximately $800,000 in an effort to convince Fasardi Corporation, an Asunción,

Paraguay-based agribusiness, to sponsor their migration to that country. While Fasardi agreed, their migration was canceled by the Paraguayan Parliament once it became public knowledge that the Kalmyks were Asian. As such, these funds were never spent, and

11 “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

54 when CWS and the Tolstoy Foundation agreed to sponsor the Kalmyks in late-July of

1951 and when the Brethren Service Commission entered the fold in September, they did so with the understanding that this migration would be fully funded by the IRO. Rather than the full $800,000, the amount pledged for their U.S. resettlement totaled just under

$200,000, an amount that was nonetheless foreseen as sufficient to pay all of the associated costs (international and domestic travel, the salaries of the Brethren Service aid workers, etc.) and to do so with money to spare.12

Despite such unprecedented financial support, Brethren Service and CWS believed that this endeavor would be particularly challenging for three main reasons.13

The first is related to the religious structure of the U.S. resettlement system and to the fact that the Kalmyks were Buddhists. The majority of American volagencies were religious charities or service organizations, and most deputized local religious leaders and congregations as DPs’ on-the-ground resettlers. Churches were used as an avenue to find employers and landlords who would hire and house them upon arrival, and just as importantly, as the institutions that would compel DPs’ assimilation. Parishioners would provide community and support, they would introduce DP families to American life and to the local community, and they would monitor their comportment as potential

12 The grant designated $20,000 for administrative expenses, $80,000 for the resettlement of the first 400 persons, and $200 for each additional person. Roland Elliott, “Operations in the U.S.A, Statement to the Enlarged Immigration Services Policy Committee Meeting, September 29, 1952,” 12-14, DPs and Refugees, Box 114, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; David Elliot to Officers Kalmuk Resettlement Committee, August 8, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; “International Refugee Organization Agreement Between Department of Church World Service, Tolstoy Foundation, Inc. and the International Refugee Organization, Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 12, 1951, Kalmuks, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Minutes, Temporary Consultative Committee on Kalmuk Refugees,” Thursday, May 24, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Sandcha Stepanow to Mr. K Halle, July 5, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8-9.

13 Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8–9.

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Americans. Resettlement was structured so that congregations would resettle their co- religionists with the assumption that the sponsored DPs would become a part of the church community. Even DPs whose faith had lapsed or who were atheists were nevertheless assigned to religious volagencies, which generally saw proselytizing as an integral part of the resettlement process.14 Brethren Service’s practice aligned with this general pattern. In the past, they assigned DPs to individual Brethren churches, some of which had come to resettle more than fifty persons each. As hoped, many of their sponsored DPs joined the congregation that had sponsored them, and as Brethren Service reported with pride in 1952, non-Brethren sponsees often sought “information about the church and its principals” and many eventually converted.15

While evangelizing was generally seen as a normative, unproblematic practice for the religious agencies deputized to implement this state project (Christianization, after all, was seen as central to Americanization), it was not endorsed for the Kalmyks, at least not immediately. Aid workers in the DP camps had already attempted to convert the Kalmyks to . This effort had been entirely unsuccessful, and it left many Kalmyks on alert against future efforts, and Kalmyk community leaders had made it abundantly clear that any attempt by the Brethrens would not be well received.16 A key purpose of admitting and resettling the Kalmyks was to enact a public spectacle of saving them from

Soviet ethnic cleansing and to demonstrate the nation’s and the Brethren’s commitment

14 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 128-201; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 211-221, 224-226, 266-293.

15 Brethren Service Center, “We’re Not Done Yet: A Report on the Church’s Program in Resettling Refugees,” c. mid-1952, file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

16 Joe Mow to Harold Row, September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” Harper’s Magazine, August 1954, 58; Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 18.

56 to racial tolerance and religious liberty.17 Because of these ideological stakes and because the Kalmyk leaders were prepared to fight for the community’s right to maintain their

Buddhism, the Brethren Service Commission realized that immediately attempting to convert them to Christianity would cause a public relations nightmare. But “would our church people understand? Would they approve?” worried Brethren Service staffers. “To be sure, it is a basic Brethren Service principle ‘to relieve human distress and suffering around the world without regard to barriers of race creed or nationality,’” they noted, quoting from a mission statement approved a decade earlier. “But do we really mean it?”18

Because of these concerns about the willingness of Brethren parishioners to help

Buddhists and because they could not rely on incorporating the Kalmyks into church communities as a means of compelling their assimilation, CWS and the General

Brotherhood Board advised the Brethren Service Commission against using local churches as the Kalmyks’ primary resettlers. Doing so eliminated a major source of volunteer labor, and it required the Brethren Service Commission to take a more involved and encompassing role than in previous projects, and it necessitated that they think more

17 It was an “opportunity to testify for better race relations,” explained the General Brotherhood Board, which was the governing body of the U.S. Church of the Brethren. Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 18–9. For examples how their resettlement was deployed to tell a story about the nation’s commitment to racial tolerance and religious liberty, Waldo Drake, “Last of Fugitive Mongol Tribe Coming to America,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1952, sec. A4; “Kalmuk Tribe Survivors Find U.S. Life Good,” The Washington Post, February 6, 1952, 13.

18 Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water, 106; Joe Mow to Harold Row, September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for quotes, Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8–9.

For many of even the most enthusiastic supporters of the project, including those who hoped to use it to prove the demonization’s commitment to religious freedom, “the fact that the Kalmuks are Buddhists was particularly disturbing,” Lorell Weiss reported. Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8-9.

57 pointedly about how they would bring about their incorporation into an American community.19

Second, the Brethren Service Commission and Church World Service believed that the Kalmyks’ resettlement would be different and more difficult than previous projects because the Kalmyks insisted on a migrating together as a group. For other DPs, the standard practice was to disperse them throughout the nation in nuclear family units, matching each with housing and an employer. Like the reliance on church communities the practice of isolating refugees from relatives and friends was intended to stymie the formation of visible, viable ethnic communities. The Kalmyks, however, with the backing of the IRO and their U.S. and Russian émigré allies, urged the Brethren Service

Commission to send Kalmyk families to the same general vicinity. As Badma Oulanoff explained in a letter to David Martin, the reason that the “crushing majority” of Kalmyk

DPs wanted to live near other Kalmyks was not because they intended to resist assimilation but because being in close contact with their friends and relatives would help them to “find a moral force necessary to [bring about] a faster and more efficacious assimilation.” A group placement would also help them to maintain the Kalmyk language

(while also learning English, “a language of a superior civilization,” Oulanoff was quick to note), and it would allow them to practice Kalmyk religious and cultural traditions together as a group. Further, living nearby would enable them to provide mutual support, both financial and social. They hoped, for example, to care for the young children as a community so that more working-age adults could seek paid employment, to pool their earnings to provide housing for elderly persons and others unable to work, and to

19 Ibid.

58 eventually build a Kalmyk cultural and religious center. In other words, Kalmyk DPs hoped to be resettled as a group because they wanted to build a Kalmyk American community in the United States.20

Would CWS, Brethren Service and the Tolstoy Foundation comply with their request to resettle the Kalmyks as a group, and would they respect the Kalmyks’ desire to cultivate—not dissolve—their community and identity as they adjusted to life in the

United States? These hopes, after all, flew in the face of standard resettlement practice as it had been developed over the past four years. Additionally, as a Church of the Brethren publication noted, “these desires, if respected, would make resettlement much more difficult” (italics added). This was the case not only for logistical reasons (i.e. because

Brethren Service could not rely on church communities to act as the Kalmyks’ primary resettlers and because the organization had no established procedures for orchestrating the migration of an entire community into a single locale), but also because of American racism and nativism. How could they go about sending nearly 1,000 Kalmyks—persons who were Asian, Russian and Buddhist—to a single American community without sparking massive negative publicity, including discrimination against the Kalmyks and backlash against the Church of the Brethren? “The Brethren are not certain that they know how to find the places where the Kalmuks will be welcome,” wrote one observer. 21

20 S. Stepanow to K. Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe (2), Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; and Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 1, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, Rio Grande Historical Collections (RGHC), New Mexico State University Library (NMSUL), Las Cruces, NM; and for quotes, B.N. Oulanoff to David Martin, October, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA, translated from the French by Amanda Katz and D. Burchinow, Secretary General, Kalmook National Representation in Germany, to Mr. Benjamin Bushong, Director, Kalmook Resettlement Program, November 12, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

21 Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water, 106; Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 18–9.

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Third, while they did not admit this in official publications, Brethren Service and

Church World Service believed that this would be a difficult project because they believed that the Kalmyks themselves were difficult. Many European camp officials had reported that the Kalmyks were “humble [and] good-natured,” that they “were good citizens with a good camp behavior,” and that “only a few seem to pose personality problems.”22 Yet American aid agencies were accustomed to exerting total control over refugee resettlement. Owing to their massive years-long struggle to find an exit from the camps and to resist repatriation to Russia, the Kalmyk DP community was well organized and accustomed to advocating for themselves. The sheer fact that they had a vision for their own resettlement and had the tenacity to argue for it was, in the view of their resettlers, a significant hassle. Moreover, not only did the community insist on its right to self-determination, but the Kalmyk DP leaders and their U.S.-based allies (particularly

Knut Halle) were known for their strong personalities. They were deeply committed to the Kalmyks’ cause and unafraid to apply pressure when necessary.23 To make matters worse, there were sharp internal tensions between Kalmyk community leaders, particularly between Stepanow, Oulanoff and other members of the Kalmook National

Representation on the one hand, and Shamba Balinov on the other, and there were also divisions within the wider Kalmyk community.24 By the time that CWS and the Tolstoy

22 Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” 4, September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

23 Among the Kalmyks’ allies, Knut Halle was apt to take the most aggressive approach. As he put it, his strategy was to serve as the “bad conscious” of the group, as the person who would “force and repeat that there has to be done more and better.” For insight into his approach and reactions to it: Elliott Shirk to Benjamin Bushong, August 6, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

24 Peotr Dzevzanov to Mr. Kapatzinsky, “For Your Eyes Only,” December 11, 1951, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML. 60

Foundation took on the project in mid-1951, they had grown tired of working with the

Kalmyks and their U.S. allies, viewing them as unnecessarily troublesome.

For the Kalmyks’ resettlers, this sense of the Kalmyks as difficult was also rooted in racism. For example, in response to the Kalmyk’s desire to have a say over the terms of their migration, an anonymous official working in Europe circulated a memo urging aid workers to ignore the Kalmyks’ demands, particularly their demand to be resettled as a group. The memo gave two explanations: First, the Kalmyks were not a real racial or cultural group. Despite the fact that “they appear very Eastern in their mores … the group is now too diversified, from the varying degrees of absorption of several cultures and civilizations, to be treated as a group.” In other words, their lack of “cultural purity” meant they had no valid claim as an ethnic group. Second, the author deployed a racist denigration of the Kalmyk leadership to justify silencing them. In this person’s interpretation, the leadership had only been able to rally the support of the IRO and their powerful global allies because they are “untrustworthy little yes-men.” The memo mocked them, noting that while some Kalmyks are “high grade morons,” the leaders

“prattle[e] about Sartre and cubism in any [number] of languages. Some even where tight pants cuffs and chew gum.” The conclusion was clear: “they just don’t know [what is best for them] and your judgment is or will be better than theirs.” The American aid workers who received this memo concluded, “It is good to be forewarned.”25

Cutting Out the Kalmyks, Cutting Out Their Aims

25 David to Jane Phillips, “Kalmuks: In Reply to Your Memo,” November 6, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA. The memo may have been written by Jane Phillips, who was working for the International Rescue Committee in Europe. While not mentioned in this memo, the Kalmyks’ portrayal as “difficult” was also racialized through narratives about their alleged kinship with Genghis . They were the “descendants of the Asiatic invaders who overran Europe in the middle ages and later,” wrote Lorell Weiss in “The Kalmyks: A Lost People.”

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Throughout their planning meetings, the actions of the American agencies responsible for resettling the Kalmyks bore out the sentiment in this memo: they assumed that their own “judgment is or will be better than theirs [the Kalmyks],” and they systematically excluded the Kalmyks and their allies from the planning meetings. The drafting of the IRO contract provides a case in point. This agreement was created during a private meeting between IRO, CWS and Tolstoy Foundation leaders. The Kalmook

National Representation had appointed Dimitry Kapatzinsky as their proxy in the United

States, but “no one even tried to call him,” Halle wrote in an urgent memo to IRC

Director David Martin. “The whole thing is so disturbing to me, and to Dimitry, that I cannot give it vent on paper at all---”. Halle instead asked Martin to meet him in person,

“I want to talk to you so badly about all this that I am almost bursting with it.” The problem, Halle later explained, was not only that they were cut out of the process, but that Church World Service Director Roland Elliott refused to give them the full details of what was determined. Seeing themselves, not CWS or the Tolstoy Foundation, as the

Kalmyks’ truest advocates and allies, Halle worried that “the whole thing was decided by two men who may or may not have the Kalmyks best interests at heart.”26

Halle, Kapatzinsky and Martin were also excluded from the planning meetings concerning the resettlement location and the other more specific details of the Kalmyks’ resettlement. CWS and Brethren Service made the decision to solicit the help of the U.S.

DPC in early September, and while they included a representative from the Tolstoy

Foundation and while the DPC invited a host of additional government agencies, no other

26 Knut Halle to David Martin, August 1, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Jane Phillips to David Martin, August 9, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; and for quote, Knut Halle to David Martin, “Strictly Personal,” n.d., file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

62 private groups or individuals were invited. The notes from that meeting reveal that they all understood that the Kalmyks “hoped to come to the United States as a complete unit,” but as a group, they decided that while perhaps smaller groups of Kalmyks could be resettled near each other, they could not allow the Kalmyks to all go to one location.27

Rather than honor the wishes coming from the Kalmyks in the camps, this decision was a based on the advice of Germany-based Church World Service aid worker Joe Mow.

According to Mow, internal conflict within the Kalmyk community made a group placement impossible. Based on his assessment of the Kalmyk community, Mow divided them into thirty-six separate groupings of individual families and advised the Brethren

Service Commission to resettle them accordingly.28

When Djab Burchinow, the Secretary General of the Kalmook National

Representation, arrived in late October to represent the Kalmyks in this decision making process, he was nominally consulted, but like Kapatzinsky, Martin, Halle and the other individuals who Kalmyk leaders had come to trust, he was not given real decision making power.29 While Kalmyk leaders and their allies continued to lobby behind the scenes, to

27 “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Elliott Shirk, “Memorandum: A Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” November 5, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

28 Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

There were at least two main Kalmyk DP factions. The contingent that was most closely aligned with the IRO, with American resettlement agencies, and with Kapatzinsky and Halle was led by Stepanow and Oulanoff. A dissenting faction was led by Shamba Balinov. While Stepanow and Balinov claimed to speak for their respective factions, there may have been additional internal dissent and disagreements within each faction, but it is unclear if Joe Mow’s 36 groupings were accurate or necessary.

29 For examples of his silencing, David Martin to Lola, “Memo: Re: Kalmuks,” January 2, 1952, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; David to Jane Phillips, “Kalmuks: In Reply to Your Memo,” November 6, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA. 63 strategize together about ways to best influence the process, and to doggedly push to have a say in the process, the reality was that they “had no power to make a decision.” As

Martin explained in one of their meetings, “CWS and Tolstoy Foundation in cooperation with the Brethren Service Commission” were the official state-sanctioned resettlers, and they “would be the agencies making the final decision”30

Yet rather than fully submit to that fact, the Kalmyks and their allies worked behind the scenes to push for their own vision for their new lives in the United States, and they even went so far as to plan their resettlement on their own. Kalmyk leaders were insistent that the community be resettled as a group and that they live somewhere along the eastern seaboard near an urban industrial center. As a result of conversations with

Dimitry Kapatzinsky, who in addition to being the Kalmyks’ official proxy in the United

States was also the Director of the Russian American Union for Protection and Aid to

Russians Outside of Russia, and with Russian immigrant leaders living in a New Jersey community known as “Rova Farms,” Stepanow and Oulanoff (and according to them, all of the Kalmyks in Germany) became especially interested in moving to New Jersey.

There, they had heard that they could “purchase land and houses for a good price,” a fact that would help them to realize their dream of mutually supporting each other and of building a Kalmyk community center, a Buddhist temple, a farm, and a home for the

Burchinow was a medical student and a community leader in the Schleissheim camp, but his racial status may have helped to speed up his migration. He was less than 50% Kalmyk, which meant that under U.S. law he would be permissible as white, even if the Kalmyks had not been declared legally white. After centuries of living in Russia, many Kalmyks had white European ancestors. Among the DPs, a substantial number of Kalmyks, mostly men, were married to Russians or Germans. Balinov to Kapatzinsky, c. November 12, 1951, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

30 David Martin to Jane Phillips, “Kalmuks: In Reply to your Memo,” November 6, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; David Martin to Lola, “Memo: Re: Kalmuks,” January 2, 1952, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; and for quote “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

64 elderly. The existence of established Russian communities was also alluring, especially because many Kalmyks had personal acquaintances among the Russians living there and because these contacts had already promised to help them find jobs. There were rumored to be well-paying industrial jobs in the area, not just for the men but for the women as well. Many Kalmyk women had worked in the garment industry in Yugoslavia before

World War II, and they hoped this experience would help them to secure jobs in New

Jersey’s textile factories.31

During their years-long struggle to find a way out of Germany, many Kalmyk leaders had become distrustful of the Tolstoy Foundation, which they believed had failed to sufficiently advocate for their interests.32 On the question of moving to New Jersey, however, the Kalmyks had this organization’s full support, and along with Halle, Martin and Kapatzinsky, the Tolstoy Foundation pled their case to CWS and the Brethren

Service Commission.33 This location, however, was resoundingly and repeatedly rejected and for reasons that often proved revealing. For example, when the Tolstoy Foundation’s

Secretary, Blair Taylor, suggested New Jersey as a potential resettlement location during one of the official planning meetings with the DPC and the Farm Placement Service, this possibility was dismissed as unacceptable because “the were not in a position to

31 “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Sandcha Stepanow to Knut Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; and for quotes, B.N. Oulanoff to David Martin, October, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA, translated by Amanda Katz; D. Burchinow, Secretary General, Kalmook National Representation in Germany, to Mr. Benjamin Bushong, Director, Kalmook Resettlement Program, November 12, 1951, “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

32 For example, Stepanow to Halle, January 27, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Knut Halle to David Martin, January 30, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Stepanow to Kapatzinsky, February 3, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Knut Halle to Eleanor Roosevelt, May 4, 1950, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

33 “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

65 provide reliable leadership.”34 Patterson was home to a thriving Russian immigrant community, and CWS, Brethren Service, the DPC and the other involved government agencies did not want the Kalmyks to live near other immigrants, much less former military leaders in the White Army.35 They hoped to minimize, not facilitate, the influence of Russian émigré leaders, the Tolstoy Foundation included, on the outcome of this project.

The Kalmyks, however, continued to advocate for a group settlement in New

Jersey and to urge their resettlers to listen to what Oulanoff referred to as “these, our wishes.”36 In response, the Brethren Service Commission and CWS not only disregarded their input but attempted to coerce their cooperation. The most vivid example of such strong armed measures was the Brethren Service Commission’s early December effort to delay the Kalmyks’ arrival in the United States, an effort that was intended to buy them more time to finalize their own resettlement plans and an effort that they went through with despite the fact that it could jeopardize the entire project. Yet even before that point, the Brethren Service Commission and CWS had threatened to thwart their migration in order to maintain their control over the project. In early November, Burchinow wrote the

Brethren Service Commission with a list of suggestions, namely that the agency should allow the Kalmyks to live in New Jersey and that they devote any remaining resettlement

34 Elliott Shirk, “Memorandum: A Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” November 5, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

35 They are specifically referring to S. Taptykoff, Prince Sergei Sergeivich Belosselsky-Belozersky, and Nicholas Korolkoff.

36 S. Stepanow to K. Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe (2), Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

66 funds to the establishment of a Kalmyk American cultural center and farm.37 In response,

CWS immediately relocated Burchinow and his family to the New Windsor headquarters

(previously, he was staying in New York City where the Tolstoy Foundation as well as

Halle, Kapatzinsky, and Martin were all located), and they put him to work at other tasks.

The idea, as CWS aid worker Joe Mow explained to Brethren Service Commission head

Benjamin Bushong, was “to distract him.” At the same time, they also gave him an ultimatum: he must stop sharing details of the official planning with the Kalmyks in

Europe, and he must stop insisting on a New Jersey resettlement. If he refused, CWS would not take the extra steps necessary to ensure that the elderly and persons with disabilities could enter the United States.38 Despite such threats, the Kalmyks and their allies continued to lobby for a New Jersey settlement, and Burchinow was fired.39

Official Planning: New Mexico, the Farm Placement Service and the Construction of Kalmyk Resettlement as a Farm Placement Project

During this period from August through mid-December when the Kalmyks began to arrive en masse, the official planning took a different trajectory. Instead of collaborating with the Kalmyks or entertaining their ideas about the resettlement location,

Brethren Service complied with the DPC’s advice that the Farm Placement Service

37 D. Burchinow, Secretary General, Kalmook National Representation in Germany, to Mr. Benjamin Bushong, Director, Kalmook Resettlement Program, November 12, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

38 Joe Mow to Benjamin Bushong, November 14, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joe Mow to Dschab Burchinow, November 15, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

39 Dschab Burchinow to Roland Elliott, January 21, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Dschab Burchinow, January 8, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

67 should determine the locale.40 The Farm Placement Service had played a prominent role in federal labor management during World War II and was deeply involved in the

Bracero program, generally in alliance with growers, rather than workers. As Ernesto

Galarza observed, in many regions “the whole farm-labor system … was controlled by a cabal of local growers and the Farm Placement Service.”41 As this section reveals, the

Farm Placement Service’s choice location was not only very different than the Kalmyks’, but it was based on a very different set of imperatives. There was, however, a consistency of themes in the way that aid workers approached this project: racism and insistence on absolute control over the Kalmyks’ futures remained prominent threads.

While the Kalmyks themselves hoped to live on the Eastern seaboard near an urban industrial center, the DPC and Farm Placement Service were insistent that they would be best suited for a rural placement in a Western or Southwestern state. By isolating them within a rural setting, along with breaking them up into several smaller communities or groupings of families, rather than concede to the idea of resettling them as a full unit, these agencies hoped to avoid the public backlash that could ensue if this group of Asian DPs became a visible presence in a more populated area. The prospect of racism was not unfounded, and many Kalmyks faced enduring discrimination and hostility in the communities where they lived. However, despite what Brethren Service

40 The person assigned to this task was Jack Donnachie. “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

41 Kitty Calavita, Inside the State, 117–8; George Q. Flynn, The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1979), 138; Elliott Shirk, Director of Resettlement to Mr. J. M. Kennedy, Farm Placement Service, January 25, 1952, Government Departments – Department of Labor, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; for quote, Ernesto Galarza, “The Braceros,” in The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, by Susan Ferriss and Ricardo Sandoval, ed. Diana Hembree, (Harcourt Brace, 1997), 58–60.

68 and CWS officials would later claim in official publications, their fears about a backlash were less about the Kalmyks’ well-being and more about accommodating receiving communities’ presumed disinclination to be flooded with Asian DPs and about ensuring that there would not be more bad press for the already-unpopular DPC.42

Isolating the Kalmyks in rural areas was also an explicit attempt to coerce their assimilation and mandate their virtual disappearance from the American scene. Not just for the Kalmyks, dispersing refugees was a standard, legally mandated practice for precisely those reasons.43 Yet the agencies were particularly devoted to insuring that the

Kalmyks slipped under the radar and stayed there. They were adamant that the Kalmyks’ placements should be firm, meaning that the Kalmyks would not undertake a secondary migration years later.44 Resettling the Kalmyks in a sparsely populated area would facilitate their invisibility to the majority of white Americans, and it would do so while putatively honoring the commitment to send them to a singular location.

More, Western and Southwestern states were seen as particularly ideal because the government agencies insisted that the Kalmyks should obtain employment in the agricultural or mining industries. Although newspapers had erroneously reported that the

Kalmyks were experienced farmers and cattlemen, these agencies knew that most

Kalmyks did not have a background in agriculture and that few had expressed interest in

42 “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

43 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 166-7.

44 For example, Mary Coppock to Archie Vance, January 3, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

69 such work.45 The first occupational report sent to the Kalmyks’ U.S. resettlers noted that fewer than a quarter of the Kalmyks in the camps had any agricultural experience and that “there are none out of this group who have skill or interest in mining.” In fact, one of the reasons that the Kalmyks had insisted on an East Coast placement was that most had lived in urban areas for decades, and they preferred industrial jobs. Despite this understanding, the government agencies that were empowered to determine the location insisted that the Kalmyks were nonetheless well-suited for agricultural work, and even

Joe Mow, who had conducted the person-by-person occupational assessment, concurred.

This understanding was connected to aid workers’ racialized vision of the Kalmyk character: they believed that there was an inherent Mongolian capacity for herding, animal husbandry and farm labor. This notion was linked to the lore of , from whom the Kalmyks were rumored to have descended. Like their ancestors, the

Kalmyks were known throughout Russia as master horsemen. No matter that a mere seven Kalmyks in the camps had actual experience with horses.46

The states initially suggested at the initial planning meetings included Colorado,

Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, but the Farm Placement Service eventually settled on New Mexico.47 The story of how this decision was made sheds further light on

45 For example, “U.S. to Admit 700 Descendants of Asian Nationals,” The Washington Post, August 3, 1951, 8. For agencies’ understanding that the Kalmyks were not farmers: “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” 4, September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

46 Ibid, and for report, Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

47 The states suggested at the first meeting included Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Utah was a suggestion from the IRO and Colorado was a state considered by Benjamin Bushong. Martha Biehle to David Martin, September 23, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; “Minutes of Meeting Concerning a Potential 70 resettlers’ rationale in sending them to the West or Southwest, and it exposes the centrality of economic considerations and of the figure of the DP as a worker in this determination. The Farm Placement Service set about making this decision by consulting primarily with agencies and organizations involved in labor management issues, including each state’s departments of agriculture and labor, state-level extension agencies and local bureaus of employment security, as well as regional farm and industry organizations including state branches of the Farm Bureau and the Chamber of

Commerce.48 While the Midwest had been envisioned as a more ideal destination for other DPs, the states suggested for the Kalmyks had received fewer DPs, despite the fact that ranchers and growers from these areas often wrote to directly to the federal government asking if they could “obtain a DP.”49 Each of these states had long histories of relying on low paid, poorly treated farm and domestic workers, many of whom were immigrants and people of color and many of whom—for example Bracero workers—had shaky legal standing in U.S. society, lacked the ability to strike, and were compelled to accept state-enforced wages far below the national average. And not coincidentally, it was precisely the agencies contacted—as well as the Farm Placement Service itself—that

Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” September 14, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

48 Elliott Shirk, “Memorandum: A Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” November 5, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

49 See for example, various letters in “New Mexico, Correspondence with State Committees and Commissions 1949-1952,” Records of the Displaced Persons Commission 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP. This was also the language used for the Kalmyks. For example, Mary Coppock to A.J. Woofer, January 3, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

71 were key in making and maintaining the exploitation of farm and domestic workers of color in these regions.50

Records of the Farm Placement Service’s conversations with these various state agencies do not remain, but the economic conditions in the state that expressed the most interest, New Mexico, shed light on why this state in particular hoped to resettle the

Kalmyks. According to historian Michael Welsh, during World War II and the following decade there was an “unprecedented demand for labor” in New Mexico, even more than in other Sunbelt states, because of the extremely rapid growth of the defense and technological industries and the major outmigration of white family farmers to urban areas. During the 1940s, tens of thousands of New Mexicans moved to Santa Fe,

Albuquerque and other urban centers. In the process, 4,000 small farms went out of production, which further consolidated the power of major landowners and agribusiness in the state. These powerful New Mexican ranchers and farmers had helped to bring about this displacement through their advocacy of the various wartime and post-war temporary labor programs that depressed agricultural wages relative to other fields.51

The imperatives of New Mexicans who had helped to facilitate previous DP migrations to the state confirm this economic explanation and expose this state’s rationale for admitting DPs. Boaz Long, a prominent New Mexican from Santa Fe who had

50 Calavita, Inside the State.

51 Vernon M Briggs, Mass Immigration and the National Interest: Policy Directions for the New Century (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2003); Calavita, Inside the State; Cindy Hahamovitch, “‘In America Life Is Given Away’: Jamaican Farmworkers and the Making of Agricultural Immigration Policy,” in The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America, ed. Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Michael Welsh, “A Land of Extremes: The Economy of Modern New Mexico, 1940-1990,” in Contemporary New Mexico, 1940-1990, ed. Richard W Etulain, 1st ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 69–74.

72 attempted to form a state-level displaced persons commission in the spring of 1951, explained why he and his fellow New Mexicans wanted to recruit DPs to their state. “Not too many years ago, it was easy to obtain domestic help from among the local people, and it was quite satisfactory; but nowadays the situation has changed. It is quite a relief for some of us to have displaced persons, and in many cases it is a great boon to them.”

Long’s idea was that male DPs could be used as agricultural laborers. “There are a great many people in this state … who could use such people [DPs], particularly farmers, live- stock people and others accustomed to handling fruit.” Single women and the wives and daughters of male agricultural laborers could work as domestics, he urged.52

Long’s hope that the DP migration could be source of family-based, gender- segmented labor is characteristic of New Mexican labor relations at mid-century. There was an institutionally supported culture of channeling immigrant women, mostly

Mexicans, but also Jamaicans, Barbadians and others, into domestic work, which was thought to simultaneously facilitate the Americanization of their families while also providing white New Mexicans with low-wage domestic labor. Immigrant women also served as a reserve supply of agricultural labor, helping to create a constant surplus of workers, which kept wages low.53

52 Boaz Long to Mr. Edward M. O’Connor, July 28, 1949, New Mexico, Correspondence with State Committees and Commissions 1949-1952, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

53 In Grace Chang’s words, “the moral value of … immigrant women apparently changed with the market.” Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy (Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2000), 99–101; Sarah Deutsch, “Women and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Hispanic New Mexico and Colorado,” Signs (1987): 724–34; Pearl Idelia Ellis, Americanization Through Homemaking (Los Angeles, Calif., Wetzel Pub. Co., 1929); Mario T. Garcia, “Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant, 1880-1930,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 6, no. 2 (1978): 19–34.

73

Brethren aid workers told Knut Halle that New Mexico was the best location because of the utter absence of racism in the state. Halle was skeptical of this assessment.54 Indeed, historian Mae Ngai confirms that in New Mexico, and “throughout the Southwest … [people of color] suffered from a system of segregation that mimicked the Jim Crow practices of the Deep South.” These states were “racialized, colonial backwaters of the nation.”55 New Mexican labor laws and World War II and post-war anti-union measures in the state meant that New Mexican agricultural and domestic workers lacked state, as well as federal labor protections. Here and elsewhere, the exploitation of workers in these sectors was racialized—these industries predominately relied on the labor of immigrants and people of color.56

Rather than an effort to avoid racism, what this insistence on this region and these economic sectors speaks to is the aid workers’ racial and economic vision for the

Kalmyks’ new lives in the United States. While working with the land was still seen as an inherently Americanizing endeavor for European immigrants, especially for those who worked on or owned small family farms, the types of wage-based agricultural and domestic work envisioned for the Kalmyks were racialized as distinctly non-white forms of labor. These were occupations deemed most appropriate for immigrants and people of color and in which there was little opportunity for upward mobility. Infused with

54 “Minutes: Kalmuk Resettlement Project,” November 25, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

55 Calavita, Inside the State; Chang, Disposable Domestics; Galarza, “The Braceros”; Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State”; Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor; and for quote, Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 132.

56 Agricultural and domestic workers were also excluded from New Deal labor protections. Nathaniel Wollman, An Appraisal of New Mexico Labor Legislation (Albuquerque: Division of Research, Dept. of Government, University of New Mexico, 1950), 28–9; Briggs, Mass Immigration and the National Interest, 106.

74 enormous ideological significance, the very act of laboring on a wage basis in farm or domestic work was seen as capable of confining racially or culturally suspects persons to the boundaries of the nation.57

The Kalmyks were aware of these associations and of the dire economic conditions facing farmworkers and domestic laborers, and they responded vociferously to these plans. “We don’t want to be dispersed as farmworkers throughout the United

States,” wrote Stepanow. As Brethren Service employee Donald Durnbaugh understood it, “the Kalmuks have read much of the Mexican problem in the middle western areas and are very much concerned that they are not found jobs putting them on par with the ‘wet- backs’ and migrant laborers.” If agencies chose to do so, Stepanow warned them, they would “risk the breakdown of our resettlement plans in later months.”58

On the Ground Planning in New Mexico, November, 1951-February 1952

To the potential good fortune of Stepanow and other Kalmyks who loathed the idea of a New Mexico resettlement, the Maryland-based Brethren Service Commission

57 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 171–5, 237; Sarah D. Wald, “The Nature of Citizenship: Race, Citizenship, and Nature in Representations of Californian Agricultural Labor,” PhD diss., Brown University, 2009. With gratitude to Sarah Wald for this point.

This is further the case for the Kalmyks because of the specific regions in New Mexico that were selected for them. The nation’s first atomic weapons test took place just outside of Alamogordo, and New Mexico’s Chavez and Otero counties were home to large numbers of Native Americans, Mexicans, Mexican Americans and other working people of color. They were home to a small number of very wealthy ranchers and other land owners, these areas were seen agricultural backwaters of the state.

58 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh and Benjamin Bushong, c. December 29, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Irwin Bounds, January 21, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for quotes, Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 7, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; S. Stepanow to K. Halle, December 19, 1951, Arranged Correspondence – United Committee to Aid Russians in Europe (2), Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

Opposition to this plan transcended the internal factions within the Kalmyk DP community. For example, Balinov to Konstantinovich, December 7, 1951, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

75 had few contacts in the state and no experience working there. In contrast to the potential

New Jersey locations, which were each in driving distance of their New Windsor office, sending the Kalmyks to New Mexico would create a significant organizational burden for the Brethren Service Commission, as they were well aware.59 Yet despite this drawback, they agreed to this location, and as their early December attempt to delay the Kalmyks’ migration made clear, they stuck to it at all costs. Their allegiance to the DPC and the farm placement service, and particularly with its agricultural and domestic labor imperatives, is made more apparent through a closer analysis of their on-the-ground practice of planning this migration once the Farm Placement Service determined the location. This history also brings out a number of additional themes in the Kalmyks’ resettlement: particularly, that it was implemented through a religious-state-business partnership in which religious organizations and volunteers oriented themselves as employment agents working in the service of wealthy growers and other elites. As they approached it, this DP employment project was one that would adhere to a gendered and racially tiered hierarchy of labor. The Kalmyks were envisioned as source of low-cost, exploitable labor who would offer not only economic benefit to white New Mexicans, but would also enable them to enact a sense of themselves as supremely moral, selfless

Americans who “saved” the Kalmyks from communism and raised them, like a parent raises a child, into the glory, security and bliss of American life.

In early November of 1951, the Brethren Service Commission began their resettlement planning in the state by contacting a state Senator “who has shown great interest in the labor problem,” as well as the New Mexico Labor Program, the Secretary

59 Lorell Weiss, “The Kalmuks: A Lost People,” 8-9.

76 of Agriculture, the state’s employment service, and its agricultural mobilization committee, agencies that were all deeply engaged in the racialized maintenance of agricultural and domestic labor in New Mexico at this time. They also solicited continuing support from the national Farm Placement Service and the U.S. DPC.60

Benjamin Bushong and Don Durnbaugh, both experienced staff persons from the New

Windsor office, traveled to New Mexico to begin this process, but in late November, the task of locating specific placements was delegated to Mary Coppock, a Brethren parishioner from Miami, New Mexico, who took on the project as the last six-month portion of her three-year-long “service assignment,” which was a Brethren practice that emerged during World War II.61

As the main resettlement worker in New Mexico, Coppock was slated with the task of arranging “sponsorships” for the Kalmyks, which meant that she needed to find a business or family who would provide employment and housing for each Kalmyk family.

By law, sponsors were also required to pledge that this housing and employment would not displace an American and that they would guard against the DPs becoming “public charges.” Coppock, who described herself someone who had “never even sold garden seeds before,” began by placing an ad in the New Mexico Stockman, a publication for ranchers. She attended a state cattleman’s convention, another for county extension

60 Mary Coppock to Benjamin Bushong, “Wyoming and Colorado,” December 14, 1951, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, c. early December, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 6, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Elliott Shirk, “Memorandum: A Resettlement Project for the Kalmuk Group,” November 5, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

61 Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” 4, September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

77 agents, and still others for sheepmen and home demonstration agents, and she reached out to churches, government agencies and influential businesspersons and community leaders throughout the state.62 In this effort to secure sponsoring employers, she repeatedly emphasized that the Kalmyks had a rural background, that they were committed to remaining in New Mexico indefinitely, that they were “an enterprising, responsible and energetic group,” and that they had made a “favorable impression” on all who had met them.63

In order to limit the scope of the search and to loosely accommodate the

Kalmyks’ demand to be resettled as a group, the Brethren Service Commission instructed

Coppock to limit her search to a specific region in the state. Coppock decided on an area in southern New Mexico which included Otero and Chaves counties and the cities of

Alamogordo and Roswell. Here, Coppock had found the strongest initial interest among local leaders.64 Not uncoincidentally, these counties were sparsely populated and largely seen as undesirable by white American workers, even more so than most rural areas in

62 Mary Coppock to Benjamin Bushong, “Brethren Service Commission: Kalmuk Refugees,” December 1, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 2, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, c. December, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Sponsoring Family for G.V. Clayton”, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

63 Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for quote Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, January 14, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

64 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 22, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Floyd Lee Matter”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. Unlike other areas in New Mexico, DP resettlement had been relatively successful in these counties, especially in Otero County, although there was a pervasive frustration about refugees’ secondary migrations to other regions. Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 31, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6; Mary Coppock to Archie Vance, Director, State Agriculture Mobilization Committee, January 3, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. Nine people had approached the extension agent even before he had met Mary Coppock. Walter Wade to Mary Coppock, December 6, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

78 the Southwest due to the nuclear test sites in the area. These counties were marked by stark wealth disparities, and they were home to a number of extremely wealthy landowners, the vast majority of whom were white, and large numbers of poorly paid workers, the vast majority of whom were people of color, mostly Native Americans,

Mexicans and Mexican Americans, as well as smaller numbers of African Americans,

Caribbean immigrants, and , including former Japanese internees. These were counties that had relied on POW laborers during World War II and that regularly hired Bracero workers.

The vast majority of the placements eventually approved by Coppock and the

Brethren Service Commission materialized out of networks between church leaders

(especially the New Mexico Ministerial Alliance),65 business organizations (namely, the

Chamber of Commerce),66 social clubs for middle and upper class white New Mexican men (the presidents of local Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club both promoted the project and each sponsored several Kalmyks themselves),67 and government agencies (especially the State Committee for Extension Work).68 Most of these organizations had overlapping memberships and had existing connections with (or were themselves led by) wealthy ranchers and industrialists. For example, Ernst Steinhoff, a German rocket scientist who

65 While one of their first steps was to reach out to churches, both in New Mexico and in the other states considered, religious groups ultimately showed less interest in the project than employers and business groups. Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, n.d., file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Charles D. Moore to Mary Coppock, December 19, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

66 In Roswell, the Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee hoped to directly sponsor 20 families.

67 Mary Coppock to Benjamin Bushong and Donald Durnbaugh, December 22, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

68 The employment service was more active in the regions that Coppock explored in Wyoming, but in New Mexico, the Extension Agency and the Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee played a more predominant role in job placement. Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Employment Survey of Entire Group of Kalmuk Refugees,” January 3, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

79 worked at the White Sands Missile Range, learned about the project from Otero county extension agent Walter M. Wade, who was also the head of the Rotary Club, who convinced his local Chamber of Commerce and the Ministerial Alliance to promote the project to their members and who worked closely with Coppock throughout the entire process. Steinhoff requested Kalmyk laborers for his home, and along with fellow sponsor G.V. Clayton, he even traveled to Maryland to convince reluctant Kalmyks to migrate to New Mexico.69

The story of Clayton’s involvement in this project helps to shed light on the inner textures of how New Mexicans conceived of what it meant to resettle refugees. Clayton, who Coppock described as a millionaire and “a most influential rancher and cattleman” from Tularosa, NM, sat on the board of the State Committee for Extension Work, which was a division of the Department of Agriculture that aided farmers and ranchers by providing resources and support, serving as a clearinghouse for laborers, and setting the

“prevailing wage” for Bracero labor (and in most cases, setting it in accordance with employers’ preference to keep wages far lower than in other occupations). After meeting

Coppock at a ranchers’ meeting in December of 1951, he mobilized his county extension service to promote this project in the Tularosa and Alamogordo area. In his words, the

Kalmyks were the “solution for the labor problem in the county,” and in the span of a few

69 Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 1, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, RGHC, NMSUL; Library; “Employment Conditions for Kalmuks Employed in New Mexico,” 3, file 32, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Dr. Ernst Steinhoff, Chief Scientist, U.S. Air Force Missile Development Center, Holloman Air Force Base,” White Sands Missile Range Hall of Fame,” http://www.wsmr-history.org/HallOfFame39.htm.

80 weeks, the agency secured requests for Kalmyk DPs from eight potential employers.70

Within a month, there were more requests than Kalmyks.71

In line with Clayton’s vision of the purpose of DP resettlement, the majority of these and other sponsors agreed to resettle Kalmyks in order to secure low paid domestic or agricultural labor. Clayton’s own applications provide a representative example. He submitted three separate applications. One was for a family who would stay at his house, and two were for his ranches. These requests, like those made by other sponsors in the area, were very specific and were designed to maximize the profitability of the Kalmyks’ labor. For one of his farms, he requested a group of four adults who would migrate together without family members and who would live together. Other sponsors like the owner of a Texaco station in Alamogordo, also requested single men who would be willing to live in a shared space, cook for each other and who would not need to wages sufficient to support a family. Clayton hoped to resettle a family on his immediate property in order to take full advantage of gendered divisions of labor. The male family member would be paid for his labors on the farm, and he hoped that the woman and their child would be willing to work in the house. Clayton was very specific about the child.

He preferred a girl who would “assume a lot of responsibility and who would be good with little boys” and who was of the right age so that she would reach employable age around the same time that his neighbor and business associate would be likely to need a

70 “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Sponsoring Family for G.V. Clayton”, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

71 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Floyd Lee Matter,” December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

81 maid.72 Clayton intended to pay the woman and child a nominal amount for their housework, but other employers did not. In the most extreme example, one employer expected the spouse of his male employee to cook for his other employees free of charge.

Other employers planned to hire Kalmyk women as farmworkers on a seasonal basis, hence creating a supply of flexible labor.73

Clayton and other interested persons saw the Kalmyks as the newest group of racialized immigrant labor, and one that would play a very specific racial role in this deeply stratified society. Many sponsors hoped to hire the Kalmyks to work in farming arrangements marked by the most extreme forms of racialized exploitation, including sharecropping, migrant labor, and tenant farming.74 For example, Floyd Lee, who was

President of the Fernandez Company, a 300,000 acre farm, ranch and lumber company, wanted to hire “young, industrious” Kalmyks who he might later convince to become tenant farmers. But at first, he planned to hire them in even less lucrative positions, digging ditches for seventy-five dollars a month or doing lumber work living in a wagon in the forest. In Coppock’s estimation, the Kalmyks would start at “the bottom of his employed list.”75

72 “Assurance for Resettlement of Displaced Persons in the USA: GV Clayton and Lackey Bros”, n.d., file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Notes on Applications, Sponsor: G.V. Clayton and Lackey Bros., Tularosa, NM”, n.d., file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Sponsoring Family for G.V. Clayton”, n.d., file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. For Texaco Station: “Intake no. 127, Re: Sponsor: R.S. French,” January 4, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

73 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 31, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to Joe Mow, March 19, 1951, file 41, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

74 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 11, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

75 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Kalmuk Resettlement Family for Floyd Lee, Grants, New Mexico”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. For “young industrious couples,” Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 28, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for “bottom of his employed list,” Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Floyd Lee Matter”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

82

On Lee’s ranch and in most of the positions offered to the Kalmyks, they would labor alongside workers of color, as well as a small number of European immigrants. In some cases, however, employers hoped that the Kalmyks would actually replace other workers of color, and in fact, one of the reasons that Otero County ranchers and growers had been so receptive to the idea of sponsoring the Kalmyks was that they envisioned the

Kalmyks as a more tractable, racially palatable alternative to Mexican and Native

American workers. In a stark articulation of this racism, extension agent Walter Wade claimed that Mexicans made such poor workers that many farmers would rather let their lands lay fallow than continue to hire them. This claim, of course, does not speak to reality, which was that wealthy growers and ranchers garnered much of their profits from the exploitation of workers of color, and they were actively engaged in lobbying for, not against, the expansion of the guest worker program with Mexico. But by any accord,

Coppock noted that “many prospective sponsors complained about Mexicans or other people they have employed,” and they hoped to hire the Kalmyks in order to solve what they referred to as their county’s “labor problem.”76

The sponsorship application of a potential employer identified as Mrs. S.P.

Johnson provide an indicative example of a sponsor who hoped to hire a Kalmyk DP in order to avoid hiring other workers of color. Described by Coppock as a wealthy and

“gracious Southern lady who takes her social responsibilities seriously” (and who had a

“Negro yardman” who was bound to her employment due to outstanding debt), Johnson requested a Kalmyk because she thought they would make good servants. Johnson

76 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh and Benjamin Bushong, n.d., file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Floyd Lee Matter”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Kalmuk Resettlement Family for Floyd Lee, Grants, New Mexico”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

83 explained that she had previously “attempt[ed] to make servants which were suitable out of a Jamaican couple,” and she thought that she would have more luck with the Kalmyks.

According to Coppock’s interview notes, she wanted “a single woman under forty probably, who isn’t likely to marry, who will be with her for the next thirty years.”

Shedding light on Johnson’s logic, many potential employers spoke of the Kalmyks as a particularly intelligent, amendable race, a view that is indicative of mid-century U.S.

Orientalism and of the messages deployed by Brethren Service aid workers. “They are a quick, intelligent race,” Donald Durnbaugh told potential New Mexican employers during his trip to the state. And shedding light on New Mexican racial and gender dynamics, while Johnson was interested in hiring a Kalmyk maid, her husband was unconvinced. Citing his experience with the Jamaican couple, Mr. Johnson did not want to hire more workers of color. While Coppock processed the request from Mrs. Johnson, hers stands out as an exception. For the Kalmyks, like other refugees, the vast majority of their official sponsors were white men, not women.77

In addition to replacing or working alongside workers of color, the Kalmyks were also offered positions that were characterized as appropriate for white immigrant workers, and in some cases, even for white Americans. Farm operators H. B. Burgett,

Frederick Smith, and Charles Moore hoped to hire the Kalmyks for jobs previously filled by other DPs.78 Extension agent Walter Wade had helped to orchestrate the county’s

77 For Johnson, “Sponsor: Mrs. S.P. Johnson,” January 10, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for Donald Durnbaugh, Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 1, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, RGHC, NMSUL; and for another articulation that Kalmyk women are ideal housekeepers: Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 10, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

78 Charles D. Moore to Mary Coppock, December 19, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Mr. Roy Tyner, Roswell NM,” January 10, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Frederick G. Smith to National Council of Churches of Christ in U.S.A., March 17, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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“very successful” utilization of German POWs in local agricultural production during

World War II, and many individuals interested in hiring Kalmyk workers had previously employed German POWs before deciding to become involved in this project.79 Others were interested in hiring Kalmyks because they had been “losing all their people [white workers] to the scientific projects of White Sands and Los Alamos,” to military service in

Korea, or to better paying jobs in urban areas. Wade also inquired about industrial jobs at a local box-making factory, and both a photography studio and a veterinarian’s office offered paid assistanceships.80

Coppocks’ own racial construction of the Kalmyks was complex and played out in her assessment of the various job offers. Warned by staff members in New Windsor that the Kalmyks would balk at being treated on par with Mexican and Native American workers, Coppock emphasized to sponsors that the Kalmyks, due to centuries of life in

Europe, were culturally European, and she gave preference to sponsors who offered jobs working alongside white workers.81 In reality, she did not see them as Europeans, but as curious specimens of a curious culture. Of their “ways”, she privately wrote, “don’t attempt to understand them, only accept them as different from yours and meaningful to them.”82 She also did not legitimately expect sponsors to treat them as Europeans, but

79 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh and Benjamin Bushong, n.d., file 39 box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Sponsor: Mr. Roy Tyner,” January 10, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

80 “Employment Conditions for Kalmuks Employed in New Mexico,” 3, file 32, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Kalmuks Settled in New Mexico,” file 32, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Sponsor: Mr. Rodden,” January 10, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

81 The idea that they would be treated on par with Mexican workers was a major concern of many Kalmyks. See for example, Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

82 Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 3, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6; Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 3, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

85 hoped that their reception would be positive, perhaps mirroring what she characterized as the community’s favorable reception of who had moved to the area after being interned in one of the state’s two internment camps.83 Additionally, her enthusiasm about the jobs in which the Kalmyks would work alongside whites did not necessarily indicate that she saw them as equals. Her hope, and the hope of all of the involved agencies, was that contact with white Americans would have a positive impact on the direction and character of their assimilation. It was for this reason, perhaps more than any other, that she saw domestic labor jobs as a “splendid opportunity.”84

In addition to putting the Kalmyks in close daily contact with white New

Mexicans, Coppock hoped to separate them from Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and

Native Americans. Aware of American racial dynamics and out of hope that they may be able to avoid the worst of American racism, the Kalmyks themselves were eager to separate themselves from these groups and other people of color, including Asian

Americans. Coppock’s imperative, however, was a bit different. Her worry, she told

Durnbaugh, was that if surrounded by workers of color, they might follow the “example of the slower working Spanish and migrant Mexicans and the drinking Navajo Indians.”85

When the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decision declared the Kalmyks legally white as a result of having lived in Europe for centuries, a ranking member of the International Rescue Committee scrawled on a hand written note that while “grateful” for decision, it was an act of “sophistry.” “With that logic I could make a Zulu of an Eskimo.” On a loose envelope, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA.

83 “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Ben L. Verden,” file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

84 For “splendid opportunity,” Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 13, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

85 She later claimed that her hesitation in placing the Kalmyks with large numbers of other workers of color was a result of her understanding that they did not want to work alongside Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans. Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 2, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. For quote, Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Grants Community,” January 2, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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Similarly, she also rejected potential Mexican American sponsors, uncomfortable with the idea that the Kalmyks would work for a Mexican American employer and explaining that the neighborhoods where they lived would “be a strange place to locate a family.”86

In explaining this hesitation, her deep seated disdain toward Mexicans was clear: “Most farms lay idle while Mexicans draw welfare money for unemployment. The attitude of the inhabitants [Mexicans] seems to be ‘why work for a hundred a month if you can get

32.00 a month for not working?” In her racial calculus, the Kalmyks, if not white, were nonetheless superior to Mexicans and Native Americans, and she hoped to keep it that way.87

While the Brethren Service Commission cautioned Coppock against sharecropping and “other tenant schemes” and while she did attempt to weed out the most exploitative job offers, on the whole, she navigated this process in close alliance with wealthy white New Mexican ranchers and growers. The disparity of wealth in the region was outstanding, and the majority of sponsorships were by from affluent individuals, who

Coppock seems to have been in awe of and to have felt obligated to as a result of their assistance in promoting the project. As a case in point, Coppock approved heartily of the job offers from Clayton and Johnson, and eventually of Lee’s as well.88 Floyd Lee’s job offers were among the most poorly paid positions and the Brethren Service Commission

86 “Job Description: Interview on January 17th at Santa Rosa, NM with Mr. Jacob Tejada,” box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

87 Ibid.

88 Johnson was initially hesitant about S.P. Johnson, as well as others who “dwelt unduly on Buddhism or color.” Mary M. Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 2.

Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 2, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Sponsoring Family for G.V. Clayton”, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Sponsor: Mrs. S.P. Johnson,” January 10, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

87 ordered her to conduct a “thorough investigation” of his and other tenant schemes, but she ultimately issued out a favorable recommendation due to Lee’s esteem in the community.89

Coppock’s approval of these sponsors and her strong alliances with business organizations are indicative of her approach to resettlement. While she later wrote about the project as a moral and religious humanitarian endeavor, she approached her assignment as if she were running an employment agency. Not just Coppock, but the national leaders of the Brethren Service Commission, often used the words

“sponsorships” and “jobs” interchangeably. As Coppock approached it, this DP employment project was one that adhered to a racially tiered hierarchy of labor and that was allied with prospective employers more than the workers, the latter of whom would have little choice over where they would work. This approach was sanctioned by the organizations she reported to. “The sponsorships that you have arranged are very fine,”

Joe Mow told to Coppock on behalf of Church World Service.90

A Moral Endeavor

This interpretation of Coppock’s approach need not necessarily imply that her understanding of this endeavor as a moral or religious project was disingenuous. Indeed, she legitimately saw it as such, as did CWS, Brethren Service and even many New

Mexican employers. As it played out on the ground, these dual visions for resettlement— as a humanitarian project or a job-placement project—were not so much competing

89 For “thorough investigation,” Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 20, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA, and for her decision to approve his application, Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 13, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 28, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, “Re: Floyd Lee Matter”, December 29, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

90 Joe Mow to Mary Coppock, February 4, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

88 visions, but mutual truths. As Coppock explained to one interested sponsor, “we work under special conditions and moral responsibilities to the people that we are helping. This means that our placements must be based on many factors and that seldom do we have an opportunity to make an individual placement with no reservations to other factors.”91 Not just rhetoric, Coppock legitimately prioritized the job opportunities that struck her as the most promising, and while frustrated by this requirement, she worked diligently to find placements in the same general vicinity.92

For Coppock and other aid workers, their sense of resettlement as a moral endeavor was seeped in paternalism. “Our work … is similar to that of a father with twenty-five (very small) children,” Mow once commented.93 Many employers’ aims were also both paternalistic and exploitative, a duality that did not strike them as contradictory.

For example J.M. Walker, a wealthy apple grower who Coppock described as a well-read gentleman who had the biography of Mahatma Gandhi on his shelves, was interested in sponsoring the Kalmyks because he was “touched by their story.” “I am well prepared to take good care of them, and I promise to help them to become good citizens,” he told her.

Yet at the same time, he hoped that his sponsees would become “share-helpers”

(sharecroppers) after the first year, joining a contingent of ten sharecropping families on his farm, and he even hoped to hire Kalmyk children as young as ten years of age.94

Another sponsor, who was identified as the spouse of a Nazarene minister and a part-time

91 Mary Coppock to Custer, December 13, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

92 Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, January 14, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 2, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

93 Joe Mow to Sol Tax, March 17, 1952, file 17, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

94 J.M. Walker to Mary Coppock, January 22, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Personal Data Concerning Interview with Sponsoring Family for G.V. Clayton”, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

89 social worker and who seemed to have thought of sponsorship as something to do in lieu of taking in foster children, spoke at length and with much excitement about the prospect of “provid[ing] a home for a person who needs it.” She was excited about teaching the woman English and American household tasks, though she also planned to ask for babysitting or housekeeping in exchange for rent. Her vision of resettlement closely hewed to white New Mexican’s approach to Mexican domestic labors at that time, and it resonated with ideas about white uplift.95

Rather than detract from the job-placement aims (to the extent, for example, that the humanitarian goals led to the exclusion of the most exploitative economic arrangements), the project’s humanitarian bearings sometimes reinforced them. As

Coppock explained to sponsors, the Brethren Service Commission did not see themselves as one-time job-placers. Finding workers through the DP program, rather than another avenue, would provide employers with a long-term intermediary who was morally invested in doing whatever necessary to make this project work. “We are not assuming that our responsibility ends when the person is placed. His [each DP’s] sponsor is assured that we shall follow up and try to make adjustments when placements are not satisfactory,” Coppock told sponsors.96 In other words, the moralized veneer of resettlement was not separate from its function as an employment project, but directly influenced the kind of labor migration it was.

95 “Sponsor: Mrs. Jenkins,” January 10, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

For other examples of sponsors whose religious or moral aims predominated, Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, December 11, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh and Benjamin Bushong, c. December 29, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Sponsor: Walter Wade,” box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

96 Mary Coppock to Custer, December 13, 1951, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Vance, January 3, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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For New Mexican employers who signed up to hire the Kalmyks, the potential to exploit these workers was diminished vis-à-vis other foreign labor programs in which workers had fewer rights and could be deported more easily. The DP labor program, however, came with its own additional benefits. In addition to personal follow up by local churches and social service agencies, that DP workers were white—or for the Kalmyks, simply presumed to be more palatable than other workers of color in the region—was a further benefit, as was the ability to enact a spectacle of oneself as saving a victim of communism and uplifting them into Americanness. Refugee resettlement offered the opportunity to accomplish all of this at once. While the co-existence of humanitarian goals and exploitative economic interests may seem contradictory, at the time, this duality was largely seen as unproblematic. As the rural women’s group Associated

Country Women of the World put it, “It is natural to … take advantage of the opportunity to select [refugees] as would be on a slave market. Humanitarian motives also have a practical and dare we say selfish end.”97

97 Victor Biezenski to the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, January 28, 1948, “Suggestions in the Matter of Displaced Persons,” folder 15, box 291, Series III, Part III, Records of the Immigration and Refugee Services of America (IRSA), General/Multiethnic Collection, Immigration History Research Center (IHRC), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

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CHAPTER TWO

Placing Refugee Workers:

Kalmyk Resettlement in Practice

In the 1960 documentary film Americans from Jungaria, the Kalmyk American narrator Arash Bormanchinov told audiences, “America satisfies the Kalmyks because we enjoy a complete freedom.… Nobody interferes in our life. Nobody tells us what to do. This is the peace we were looking for.”1 It is unclear if these were Bormanchinov’s own sentiments or if screenwriter Suzanne Johnston wrote this portion. Produced a decade after their initial arrival in the United States, this sentiment reflects the extent to which were eventually able to assert their right to self-determination.

Yet during their first eight months in the United States, the portion designated as their

“resettlement,” their officially designated sponsors—not the Kalmyks themselves—were empowered to determine the basic parameters of their lives in the United States.

1 Norman Mackie, Americans from Jungaria (Princeton Seminars, 1965), filmstrip, 17:57, posted by “Bsqueak”, September 24, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr7LmkwwR8E.

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While the previous chapter focused on what their resettlers planned for them, this chapter tells the story of how their first year in the United States actually proceeded: of how their resettlers acted on their state-sanctioned right to “tell [them] what to do.” The first half of the chapter tells the story of what happened when the Kalmyks began to arrive in the United States before their planned New Mexico settlement was fully arranged and of their eventual placement on the East Coast, predominantly in

Philadelphia and New Jersey. While the settlement of Kalmyks on the East Coast proceeded very differently than what had been expected for New Mexico, which took months to plan and in which there were jobs and individual housing placements lined up before they arrived, I show that it too transpired through the joint efforts of government, business and religious organizations. Their East Coast resettlement was also one in which economic concerns were prioritized, in which coercion was used to compel the Kalmyks’ compliance, in which racism was pervasive, and in which the aid agencies insisted on absolute control over the project.

In conjunction with the first chapter, this history brings out how different U.S. aid agencies, religious organizations, government agencies and everyday Americans—as well as Kalmyk community leaders and their Russian émigré and U.S.-born allies— thought about the purpose and priorities of the Kalmyks’ resettlement. The remainder of this chapter turns to lived experience of these purposes and priorities for the Kalmyks themselves. For a window into this question, we focus on two specific episodes: first, to the emergence of a Philadelphia-based Kalmyk American mutual aid society, and second, to the personal experiences and collective organizing of the approximately one hundred

Kalmyks whose first resettlement destination was not Philadelphia or New Jersey, but

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New Mexico, as aid workers initially intended. In addition to shedding light on the human impacts of their resettlers’ priorities, these incidents shatter common assumptions about refugee agency. The international refugee regime—both during this period and to the present day—tends to conceive of refugees as passive receivers of assistance, as persons who, by the sheer fact of being refugees, lack agency over their own lives.2 In contrast, these episodes expose the reality of refugee agency in the face of its presumed lack. Indeed, the Kalmyks were able to exert a surprising amount of control over the character of their resettlement. The story of how they did so does not negate the fact that resettlement was a coercive project, but rather brings out this coerciveness quite starkly.

While resettlement is generally figured as an act of bringing refugees to freedom, there was very little freedom in the act of being resettled. Like other refugees entering the

United States, the Kalmyks’ lives, work and even the direction of their acculturation were to be fully determined by outside groups.

Together along with the prior chapter, this chapter is a microhistory that paints a definitive yet nuanced portrait of what resettlement was as it played out in the Kalmyks’ experience. The chapter concludes by exploring the significance of this history for our understanding of refugee policy. It opens up questions about what resettlement was a state project, and it considers what it might mean to keep the Kalmyks at the fore of our mind as we contemplate this question from a macrohistorical perspective.

The Seabrook Farms Debacle and “The Victory of Our Ideas”

The Kalmyks began to arrive in the United States in mid-December before the

New Mexico arrangements were finalized, and the Brethren Service Commission, with

2 Peter Nyers, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York: Routledge, 2006), 98.

94 the help of Church World Service and the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission, placed them in temporary barracks in Parvin Park, a New Jersey state park about two hours from their headquarters in Maryland. That the Kalmyks were placed en masse in a state park was entirely out of the ordinary. DPs were not permitted to enter the United States until their sponsoring volagency had secured a specific job and housing arrangement.3 The

Kalmyks’ resettlers made this decision precisely because they still intended for them to go to New Mexico. Placing them directly in housing and jobs on the East Coast would have thwarted their plan to send the Kalmyks to New Mexico, while delaying their entry until the New Mexico plans were finalized would have thwarted their immigration altogether.

The DPC and CWS orchestrated this unusual plan by drawing on their existing alliances with corporate employers. Elliot Shirk, the DPC’s Director of Resettlement, contacted C. F. Seabrook, the owner and CEO of Seabrook Farms, a food processing plant near Parvin Park, and Seabrook immediately agreed to fill out the necessary sponsorship paperwork for several hundred Kalmyk DPs.4 Partnering with Church World

Service, C. F. Seabrook had sponsored several thousand refugees under the 1948

Displaced Persons Act and had even traveled to DP camps in Europe in order to hand pick individuals who he believed would make the most productive employees.5 In an oral

3 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 48-50.

4 Virginia B. Rose, Secretary to Elliott Shirk and Roland Elliott, October 24, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

5 In fact, when they first attempted to reach out to Seabrook about these plans, Seabrook was actually in Germany scouring the camps for workers. Virginia B. Rose, Secretary to Elliott Shirk and Roland Elliott, October 24, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP. For more on Seabrook Farm’s 95 history with Seabrook’s son, journalist Charles Harrison asked if C. F. Seabrook’s motives were altruistic. His son scoffed, responding unequivocally, “If you had asked him if he was a humanitarian, he probably would have been upset and responded, ‘Hey’,

I’m no Pinko.” Seabrook Farms, which was one of the nation’s first and largest agro- industries, was built on the low-cost labor of immigrants, people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. Between the 1910s and 1960, C. F. Seabrook actively recruited workers from over twenty-five different nations. During World War II,

Seabrook partnered with the War Manpower Commission to hire guest workers from

Jamaica and Barbados and with the War Relocation Authority to recruit interned

Japanese American farmers, cannery workers and machinists. Over 2,500 Japanese

Americans were permitted to leave internment camps during the planting season on the condition that they would work for Seabrook Farms for at least three months.6

Seabrook’s purpose in sponsoring the Kalmyks was somewhat different than for the other DPs he had sponsored. He seems to have intended to hire his pick of the

Kalmyks, but he understood that they were otherwise bound for New Mexico. Church

World Service, Brethren Service and the Displaced Persons Commission had sought his sponsorship in order to circumvent the requirement that refugees must have sponsorship agreements before arriving in the United States. In exchange, Seabrook was promised access to the best laborers of the bunch and full financial reimbursement for rent, food, supplies, maintenance, and other expenses associated with housing them.7 More, CWS

recruitment of DP laborers, Charles Hampton Harrison, Growing a Global Village: Making History at Seabrook Farms (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2003), 73–89.

6 Harrison, Growing a Global Village, 7.

7 Benjamin Bushong to C. F. Seabrook, February 21, 1952, file 43, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; 96 and the DPC promised Seabrook money from the funds originally raised by the IRO to renovate the Parvin State Park cabins, which he leased from the state of New Jersey. A former CCC camp, these crude structures were used by Seabrook to house migratory farmworkers during the summer months. The renovations funded by the Kalmyk resettlement grant were extensive, of a permanent nature, and cost “a considerable amount of money,” noted one observer. These renovations angered the Tolstoy

Foundation and the Brethren Service Commission because while the Kalmyks were only there for a limited period of time and while the renovations were largely incomplete during the majority of their stay, once they were finished and the Kalmyks left, Seabrook was able to use them for other workers, an arrangement that was in line with Seabrook’s practice of partnering with state and federal agencies for his own financial gain.8

Seabrook’s willingness to accommodate this last-minute plea by the DPC was also presumably intended to strengthen his relationship with the agency, which had recently begun a program offering direct, almost immediate placements to select corporate sponsors. DPC agents traveled to the workplaces of preferred employers, provided them with extensive occupational and biographical information on several thousand DPs,

Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, March 1, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; Virginia B. Rose, Secretary to Elliott Shirk and Roland Elliott, October 24, 1951, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; John Sholl to John Gibson, January 7, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; and for an example of the weekly expenses, see “Invoice,” January 5, 1952, file 44, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

8 Benjamin Bushong to Sprinkle of Seabrook Farms, March 31, 1952, file 44, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Harrison, Growing a Global Village; Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 28, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; C. F. Seabrook to Benjamin Bushong, February 21, 1952, file 43, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Benjamin Bushong to C. F. Seabrook, February 13, 1952, file 43, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; C. F. Seabrook to Ruth Downing, January 23, 1952, file 43, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

97 allowed them to handpick their selection, and promised them that these individuals would be shipped from Germany in a matter of days.

It was the dead of winter when the Kalmyks arrived at their New Jersey barracks, which were large, unheated, crude shacks that one aid worker later described as “just like another DP camp.”9 If the Kalmyks had stayed in these dire conditions for longer, the

Brethren Service Commission may have been more effective in enticing them to New

Mexico. But in a very public way, things did not go as planned. In mid-January of 1952, an official from the state’s migrant labor board discovered their presence, and he and other local and state officials were outraged. John Sholl, the Secretary of the New Jersey

Displaced Persons Commission, called public hearings, ostensibly to investigate

Seabrook’s violation of housing standards under the state’s migrant labor act. Seabrook had placed multiple families together in single room buildings without partitions or proper flooring, which by his own admission was something he “of course understood

[was] against the regulations of the Department of Labor and the Department of

Health.”10

The poor living conditions, however, were largely a cover for other concerns.

When enticing C. F. Seabrook to house the Kalmyks, the U.S. DPC and Church World

Service had circumvented the New Jersey Displaced Persons Commission, which was one of the most active state commissions in the nation. Like other state-level DPCs, the

New Jersey commission was an independent organization, not a subsidiary of the U.S.

DPC. While each of the state commissions operated somewhat differently, the New

9 Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 28, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service.

10 C. F. Seabrook to Benjamin Bushong, February 21, 1952, file 43, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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Jersey DPC conducted individual studies of each potential placement, which included auditing sponsors’ character and stability, assessing the general employment situation in each region, and ascertaining that the DPs would not negatively affect the state’s economic conditions.11 The New Jersey DPC was angry that they were not consulted about this project, but if consulted, they would have surely blocked it, as the U.S. DPC and CWS seemed to have foreseen. As the New Jersey DPC explained it, “the situation is particularly critical right now in view of the fact that we have peak unemployment.”12

Their underlying concerns, however, were not only economic but racial. A ranking officer from the DPC attended these hearings, and Senator Sholl told him that they were worried about “the problem of mass resettlement of a distinct racial group.”13

The U.S. DPC, CWS and the Brethren Service Commission assured the New Jersey commission that the Kalmyks would only be in Parvin Park temporarily, and this promise seemed to allay their concerns. Worried that the Kalmyks would create a permanent

“colony” in the state, the purpose of their outcry was to “safeguard New Jersey’s interests” and to insure that this “distinct racial group” would settle elsewhere.14

11 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 305.

12 Elliott Shirk, “Luncheon Meeting, New Jersey D.P. Commission,” January 10, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; John Sholl to Gibson, January 7, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; and for quote, John Sholl to O’Connor, January 4, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

13 Elliott Shirk, “Luncheon Meeting, New Jersey D.P. Commission,” January 10, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

14 Ibid. For “safe-guard New Jersey’s interests,” and “mass resettlement of a distinct racial group,” John G. Sholl to Roland Elliott, January 28, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for “colony,” John Sholl to O’Connor, January 4, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

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As a result of these hearings, the Brethren Service Commission agreed to transfer the Kalmyks out of these New Jersey barracks to the New Windsor Service Center. From there, efforts to convince them to migrate to New Mexico intensified, but at the same time, aid workers also began to place them in Philadelphia and surrounding areas. They did so in part out of necessity. They needed to make room for those who had yet to arrive from Germany and for those who had not yet left Seabrook Farms, and because operating a DP camp in the United States was untenable, especially in the face of continued push back by the state of New Jersey.15 But they also did so because most Kalmyks simply refused to go to New Mexico. Indeed, in largest part, CWS and Brethren Service’s decision to look for East Coast placements was a result of the lobbying and pressure by

Kalmyk leaders in collaboration with Halle, Kapatzinsky, Martin, the Tolstoy Foundation and several noted Russian émigré leaders, including Russian Prince Serge Belosselsky, and most importantly, by the broader Kalmyk DP community, who shared their concerns and insisted on staying on the East Coast. As Stepanow wrote Kapatzinsky, “I won’t hide

15 Hugh A. Doyle, “Luncheon Meeting, New Jersey D.P. Commission,” handwritten report, January 10, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Roland Elliott to Benjamin Bushong, January 21, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, February 11, 1951, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Mr. John G. Sholl, January 21, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Mr. John Sholl, cable, January 27, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to the Kalmuk Resettlement Committee, January 28, 1952, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Roy Hiteschew to Mr. & Mrs. Oran Hoffman, January 15, 1951, file 23, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; Joe Mow to Mary Coppock, March 17, 1952, file 10, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; John Sholl to John Gibson, January 7, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; John Sholl to Mr. A. Roland Elliott, January 15, 1952, Kalmuks, O’Connor Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

100 from you that this situation gives me not a little joy. In this I see the victory of our ideas.”16

The East Coast Job Placement Project

Like their New Mexico plans, Brethren Service’s placements on the East Coast reflected how religious-state-business connections governed their approach to finding sponsorships and how the Kalmyks’ resettlement continued to be envisioned as a job placement project. The first emerging hub was in Philadelphia where arrangements were facilitated by Benjamin Bushong’s political and personal connections with the Harrisburg headquarters of the State Employment Service. According to Joe Mow, who was transferred from Germany to New Windsor to oversee the project, the

Pennsylvania Employment Service assigned their best job counselors to the task, Jack

Gelfand and Ruth Griffin. Focusing on finding jobs for the men first, Gelfand and Griffin arranged job interviews with local employers. Mow picked them up from Parvin Park or

New Windsor, drove them to their job interview, filled out the forms, and translated for them. As the Kalmyks found jobs in Philadelphia, the Brethren Service Commission partnered with Ruth Downey of Church World Service and with the Philadelphia Friend’s

Neighborhood Guild to locate housing.17 The Friends Neighborhood Guild had helped resettle Japanese Americans who worked at Seabrook Farms during the war, and they

16 For the role that the Kalmyks’ opposition played in this decision, Bushong to Smith, February 15, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; David Martin to Lola, “Memo: Re: Kalmuks,” January 2, 1952; file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; For the role of the Tolstoy Foundation, Russian Daily, February, 1952, in file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Extract from Minutes of the Meeting of the Operating Committee,” December 13, 1951, 2, folder 10, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; and for quote, Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, c. mid-January 1951, box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

17 Benjamin Bushong to Ruth Griffin, March 6, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Bushong to Levine, December 24, 1951; box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; Levine to Benjamin Bushong, January 15, 1951, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Memo, February 19, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

101 moved the Kalmyks to an African American neighborhood in Philadelphia, a fact that was a source of much opposition from Kalmyks and was the topic of virulent letters from

Kalmyk leaders who had remained in Europe.18

Other area sponsors/employers were connected to the Brethren Service

Commission through religious channels. In fact, when they first realized that the plans to send the Kalmyks to New Mexico might fall through, one of Brethren Service’s first tasks was to contact local Protestant and Orthodox churches. Among others, they contacted Reverend Neal Raver and Reverend G. Nelson Moore, both of whom were

Methodist ministers who specialized in ministering to migrant laborers and had extensive connections with potential agricultural employers. In addition to hearing about the

Kalmyks through religious channels, some employers were themselves also religious leaders. One employer, the owner of a large lumber mill in New Jersey, was given a position on the Brethren Service Commission’s board in part because they believed his involvement would simultaneously facilitate job placements and help create inroads into the .19 As Benjamin Bushong later narrated the endeavor to one religious volunteer, “only by the splendid cooperation of our Christian friends has this program of resettlement been accomplished.… To those of us who are privileged to observe the unselfish and heroic efforts of individuals, members of congregations and

18 Joe Mow account; Shamba Balinov to Knut Halle, March 22, 1952, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, February 12, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Harrison, Growing a Global Village, 57, 62, 66; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service.

19 “Extract from Minutes of the Meeting of the Operating Committee,” December 13, 1951, 2, file 10, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Smith to Morse, January 8, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Garvin to Joe Mow, April 30, 1952, file 19, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Arthur M. Guttery to Benjamin Bushong, January 14, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Webb to Benjamin Bushong, February 13, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Warfield to Benjamin Bushong, February 11, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

102 others in meeting situations and helping people adjust or find their way in the community, it is truly a thrilling experience and gives encouragement for the Christian way of life.”20

While records of the Brethren Service Commission’s one-on-one conversations with potential employers were not preserved, it seems that their approach resonated with

Coppocks’. They, too, promoted the Kalmyks’ agricultural background, and they took care to describe the Kalmyks’ racial and cultural characteristics, presumably for the purpose of assuring skeptical sponsors that the Kalmyks were racially palatable. In the written materials distributed to potential employers on the East Coast, the Brethren

Service Commission materials again emphasized the Kalmyks’ experience in the agricultural industry, despite the fact that the agency had long-before been dispelled of the notion that the Kalmyks were predominantly agriculturalists. These materials also described them as “hardworking, responsible, clean, disciplined, humble, good-natured and noncommittal,” concluding that “despite their Asiatic background their culture sociologically is European.”21

Not just a product of American religious groups, business leaders and government agencies, the Kalmyks’ East Coast placements also materialized out of the Kalmyks own efforts. In addition to refusing to go to New Mexico, many actually arranged their own sponsorships (employment and housing arrangements) in areas where they wanted to live.

The fact that Philadelphia became one of the primary hubs for the Kalmyk community was a result not just of Brethren Service’s collaboration with Griffin, Gelfand, the

20 Benjamin Bushong to Mr. L.S. Ashbrook, March 6, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

21 “Kalmuk News,” Brethren Service Center News 2 no. 6 January 25, 1952, clipping, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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Friend’s Service Committee and other white Americans, but of the Kalmyks’ own planning and volition. The Kalmyks mined their connections in Philadelphia’s Russian immigrant community, and the first to arrive in the city quickly helped their compatriots to find jobs and housing, creating a chain migration. Within several months, Kalmyk DPs had successfully created an ethnic enclave in the Fairmont neighborhood.22 As one reporter noted, “by midsummer that city had more Kalmuks than any other place in the country—about 350.” Rather than living within 100 miles of each other, as had been planned in New Mexico, many Kalmyks in Philadelphia lived on the same block, on

Fairmont Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Street.23

The second emerging hub for the Kalmyk American community was New Jersey, a fact that owed even more strongly to the Kalmyks themselves, not the Brethren Service

Commission. New Jersey, especially the city of Paterson and the Howell Township, had been many Kalmyks’ preferred destination before they even left Europe due to the fact that Kapatzinsky and several Kalmyk DP leaders had personal contacts among the

Russian immigrant communities in these areas. With the assistance of the Tolstoy

Foundation and individual , many Kalmyks, especially those who were originally from the Astrakhan region of Russia, moved from Maryland and Parvin

Park to these communities in early 1952. Saman and Noron Adianov were the first to settle in Howell, and a chain migration soon followed. The majority settled in a community called Farmingdale, and there, Hedy and Nicholas Korolkoff, prominent

22 Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” 56.

23 Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” 56.

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Russian émigrés who had sponsored thousands of other Russian DPs, helped them find jobs in nearby chicken farms and factories.24

Life and Work in Philadelphia and New Jersey: Harsh Realities, Pleasant

Propaganda

In the various special interest stories that were written about the Kalmyks during their first year of life in the United States, it was almost universally reported that they were fairing splendidly. A Washington Post article titled “Kalmuk Tribe Survivors Find

U.S. Good Life,” reported that Gama Akuginow, who the article described as a “young woman with the almond-shaped eyes and olive skin of a Mongolian,” summarized life in the United States precisely as the title suggested. “Hier, es ist gut,” she reportedly told journalists.25 Americans from Jungaria told a similar story. With images of Kalmyks driving convertibles, building houses for each other, and even financing the construction of a Buddhist temple that was an exact replica of a temple in Jungaria (a region in northwestern China that extends into western and eastern and that is now known as or Zungaria), the film concluded “The Kalmyks are prospering in America.”26

24 Roland Elliott to Mr. John Sholl, cable, January 27, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Alexey Ivanchukov, “How American Kalmyks Came and Settled to Howell Township,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFntJRBKc0, uploaded September 28, 2008; Joe Mow to Mary Coppock, February 4, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Ralph Reppert, “A Buddhist Shangri-La in the United States,” The Baltimore Sunday Sun Magazine, February 16, 1958, 16; Russian Daily, February, 1952, in file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Hearing on the Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, 84th Cong. (May 23, 1956) (testimony of Mrs. Nicholas Korolkoff and Nicholas Korolkoff).

25 “Kalmuk Tribe Survivors Find U.S. Good Life,” The Washington Post, February 6, 1952, 13.

26 Norman Mackie, Americans from Jungaria (Princeton Seminars, 1965), filmstrip, 17:57, posted by “Bsqueak”, September 24, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr7LmkwwR8E.

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The reality was more difficult. “We really worked hard, and I mean hard,” recounted Dorscha Purinow, a Kalmyk man who settled in Howell, New Jersey with his spouse Maria. “We are still poor. It takes time,” he said in 1954. The Purinows and other

Kalmyks survived through mutual cooperation. As one reporter noted, “large three- generation households are the rule and almost everybody works, including the young mothers. The men work as laborers, on construction jobs at Levittown or in New Jersey carpet mills; the women, in dress factories or food-processing plants. Individually, they make between $40 and $80 a week, but when their wages are pooled, family totals mount up.”27

As they had anticipated, the Kalmyks also faced pervasive racism. While in

Europe, the Kalmyks had heard stories about American racism, and they had experienced it first hand as DPs, not only in their initial rejection on racial grounds by the Board of

Immigration Appeals, but also from U.S. aid workers and military officials who they interacted with on a daily basis in the camps. In the most egregious example, of which the entire community was aware, American soldiers, in disbelief that there were European

Asians, presumed one Kalmyk family to be Japanese spies and deported them to the

Soviet Union. What happened to the family upon arrival was never known. The Kalmyks in the camps presumed they were killed.28

Racism in the United States was also frequent. Soon after he arrived in the United

States, Basan Abuschinow was arrested in Philadelphia for walking down the street while

27 Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” 57. Various sources offer different spellings of Purinow’s name, including Purgaew and Purwejew. Purinow is the spelling used on his death certificate. Social Security Administration, Social Security Death Index, Master File, accessed on ancestry.com on November 1, 2012.

28 Joseph Mow to Dr. W. Harold Row, “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States,” September 24, 1951, file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

106 on his way home to visit his spouse and child who were still living in the New Windsor

Service Center. According to police and to local shop owners, Abuschinow looked

“suspicious.” Aware that his arrest could subject him to deportation, Abuschinow was terrified. “Our Police Department could do nothing to dispel his belief that his name was being entered ‘in the record,’” the Mayor told the Brethren Service Commission, and he recommended that all Kalmyks be required to wear and identification badge in order to

“alleviate the fears of our merchants.”29 Hedy Korolkoff, who had helped them find jobs in New Jersey, recalled that there were particular difficulties finding work for the

Kalmyks because discrimination against “the yellow race”.30 Once they found work, many experienced harassment. “If you come from Russia, you are a Communist,” one young Kalmyk man’s co-workers told him. “You look Chinese. You are Chinese. We kill

Chinese,” they threatened.31 As Djab Burchinow told Naia Cucukov in the 2003 documentary The Haven - Revisited, “It was a pretty racist place here in the United

States.”32

Coercion, Control and the Creation of Financial Dependency

Like Brethren Service and CWS’s effort to exclude the Kalmyks’ from the planning discussions and like their attempt to coerce them into going to New Mexico, a prominent theme in the Kalmyks’ placements in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was

29 Mayor Joseph Mathias to the Brethren Service Commission, February 27, 1952, file 17, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to Joseph Mathias, March 3, 1952, file 17, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

30 Hearing on the Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, 84th Cong. (May 23, 1956) (testimony of Mrs. Nicholas Korolkoff and Nicholas Korolkoff).

31 Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, January 22, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; quoted in Roche, “Philadelphia’s Lost Tribe,” 59.

32 Naia Cucukov, The Haven – Revisited (2003), vhs, given to the author by Robert Lee.

107 volagencies’ active and purposeful effort to enforce and maintain their control over the project and over the Kalmyks’ lives in the United States. Church World Service, the

Brethren Service Commission, and the Tolstoy Foundation largely kept the details of the planned East Coast settlements a secret from the Kalmyks.33 In their view, the direction of the Kalmyks’ resettlement, from the neighborhoods where they would live to how the

IRO funds would be spent, was not open “for general debate among all the Kalmuks,” wrote Roland Elliott. While conceding that individual Kalmyks had some say over the terms of their own placements (for example, they could look for jobs on their own), these big picture questions would be decided “by ourselves as their sponsors.”34

Notably, this was the case even when the details of Brethren Service, Church

World Service and the Tolstoy Foundation’s plans resonated with the Kalmyks’ desires, and the agencies worked hard to maintain this absolute control. For example, in the late spring of 1952, Church World Service and Brethren Service, in partnership with the

Friends Neighborhood Guild decided to use the surplus resettlement funds to purchase a small community center in Philadelphia, as both the Kalmyks and the IRO had urged. Yet rather than entrust the building to the Kalmyks themselves, much less informing them of the plans—Church World Service purchased the property and transferred the title to

Francis Bosworth, who was the Director of the Friends Neighborhood Guild, which was a

Quaker settlement house and community center in Philadelphia. CWS considered

Bosworth a trustworthy ally, and in entrusting the building to him, the agency maintained their influence over the project and over the Kalmyks. The building would be transferred

33 Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

34 Roland Elliott to Alexandra Tolstoy, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

108 to the Kalmyks only once the CWS decided that they were “ready” and only once the

Kalmyks had raised the necessary funds.35

As that incident demonstrates, Church World Service was able to hold on to their control over the project in large part due to their control over the resettlement funds. Both

Brethren Service and the Tolstoy Foundation grew resentful of CWS’s tight control over the funds: Brethren Service believed that CWS withheld funding from their agency in order to keep a tight leash on them, a dynamic that Brethren Service accountant Roy

Hiteschew called “considerably disturbing” and even “disgusting.”36 The Tolstoy

Foundation’s allegations were more sustained and severe. Believing that both Brethren

Service and Church World Service had mismanaged the resettlement funds, they threatened to sue the agencies and demanded extensive audits of their financial practices.37

More direly, each of these agencies used their control of the IRO grant to maintain their control over the Kalmyks. When a group of Kalmyks in Philadelphia asserted their right to have control over the resettlement project, CWS and Brethren

Service aid workers privately assured themselves that “since we have the money, I think

35 Francis Bosworth to Ira Gibble, April 24, 1952, file 18, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Benjamin Bushong to Joe Mow, phone message, May 7 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Mr. I. Albatiev, June 19, 1952, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Bosworth, June 4, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Memo, February 19, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mow to Elliott, April 30, 1952, file 18, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Joe Mow, May 7, 1952, file 19, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joe Mow to Mary Coppock, February 4, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Shirk to Bushong, March 13, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6.

36 For “disturbing,” Greiner to Roy Hiteschew, February 28, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “for disgusting,” Roy Hiteschew to Mr. F. A. St. Amand, February 5, 1952, file 13, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

37 Shamba Balinov to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, March 22, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Fairfield to Taylor, p.s. to Benjamin Bushong, May 10, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Blair Taylor to Benjamin Bushong, May 8, 1952 and May 19, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

109 we can control it.”38 The Tolstoy Foundation also deployed their alleged financial powers to exert their influence over the Kalmyks. Shortly after the Kalmyks arrived in the United

States, Alexandra Tolstoy visited the Vineland, New Jersey camps and “gathered us and told us this: without her approval no one could get money,” Sodman Kuldinow, a veterinarian from Yugoslavia, recounted to Kapatzinsky. In reality, Church World

Service, not the Tolstoy Foundation, had the power to issue private loans to Kalmyks, but

Tolstoy’s power play nonetheless speaks to the use of financial control to exert control over the community.39

The legal dynamics governing refugee resettlement also facilitated resettlement agencies’ control over the project, a pattern that was established from the Kalmyks’ first interactions with these agencies. Because DPs needed a volagency sponsor to be eligible to enter the United States under the Displaced Persons Act, without CWS’s or the Tolstoy

Foundation’s approval, individual Kalmyks were not able to migrate to the United States.

In one instance, a Tolstoy Foundation employee was said to have told a Kalmyk woman that unless she paid the Tolstoy Foundation a substantial amount of money, she would not file the necessary paperwork.40 The exclusion of DPs who had taken up arms against forces loyal to the United States was also used to silence the Kalmyks. “All of our so- called intellectuals are naturally afraid of Alexandra Tolstoy because she knows all of their past, which they themselves are afraid of and are trying to hide from others,”

Stepanow told Kapatzinsky. Stepanow added that he did not believe that “she will put

38 Joe Mow to Donald Durnbaugh, May 14, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

39 Roland Elliott to Joe Mow, February 25, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Sodman Kuldinow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

40 Oulanoff to Kapatzinsky, n.d., Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

110 this knowledge to bad use,” but nonetheless, that the result of this threat was that “our heroes in this affair have gone mute and have lost their courage to speak.”41 While he did not mention names, he was referring to persons who were rumored to have collaborated with the German Army or the Nazi Party during World War II. He was also referring to himself. Stepanow was in during World War II, where he was a member of the

Eastern Division of the Vineta Propaganda Service, which was a division of the National

Socialist Ministry of Propaganda. While he and several other Kalmyk intellectuals had collaborated with the Nazis, he told Kapatzinsky that they did so because of their anti- communism, not because they adhered to National Socialist thought. “The Kalmyks were not interested in National Socialism…. We had no interest in in this new social political teaching. We were only interested in the fight against the Bolsheviks because they exterminated our people. Only hatred led us to this collaboration.”42

Finally, American agencies’ control over the Kalmyks’ lives in the United States was amplified by the creation of Kalmyk financial dependency upon arrival. Most

Kalmyks accumulated significant debt to Church World Service during their first months in the United States, despite the fact that the funds dedicated to their resettlement were more than sufficient to cover all costs. At Parvin Park, the resettlement workers created a

“store” that provided necessities on credit. Without external employment during these first months, the Kalmyks in the camps had little choice but to purchase items in this manner.43 Others accrued debt in the form of CWS loans to their employers or landlords

41 Stepanow to Kapatzinsky, c. January, 1952, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR- KAP, RBML; for quote, Stepanow to Kapatzinsky, January 19, 1951, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

42 Ibid.

43 Ira Gibbel to Roy Hiteschew, February 27, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. 111 for household furnishings—loans given to their employers but repaid by the Kalmyks.44

Others owed money for rent, food and hospital bills. By March of 1952, the group owed a cumulative total of over $10,000, ranging between $1 to $615 per person, the latter of which was about a half of a year’s salary for farm and domestic workers. A month later, the Kalmyk loan total was nearly $15,000.45 Barred from receiving public assistance and feasibly subject to deportation if they did not repay their loans to Church World Service, the ban against immigrants who had become “public charges” meant that the Kalmyks very ability to stay in the United States was dependent on CWS financial assistance and on the agency’s willingness not to report them to the INS.46

The Lived Experiences of Agencies’ Practices and Priorities: The Kalmyk American Mutual Assistance Society

In March of 1952, Kalmyks in Philadelphia organized a Kalmyk mutual assistance society that endeavored to wrest control over Kalmyk resettlement from the

Brethren Service Commission. The purpose of this Philadelphia-based mutual aid society was to “give material and moral assistance to its members” and to “to support and protect

[the] cultural and religious demands and interests” of the Kalmyk American community.

The members hoped to eventually create a library and to establish a Kalmyk community center and farm with a house for elderly people, a nursery, a school, a cemetery, and a

Buddhist temple.47 Yet more immediately, their emphasis was asserting their right to take

44 Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 21, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

45 “Policy on Legitimate KRP Expenses and Refundable Advances for Billing Purposes,” file 7, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “List of Refundable advances to Kalmuks,” file 13, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; “Collection Letters Sent Out,” June 6, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

46 For example, Cunningham to Benjamin Bushong, March 28, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

47 “Minutes of the Kalmuk Meeting Held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 9, 1952,” file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

112 charge of their own lives in this moment in which CWS and the Brethren Service

Commission were still their legally-designated “resettlers.” As a prominent European ally of these individuals put it in a public speech that was reported on by newspapers in the United States, the Kalmyks’ resettlement was a “forced resettlement” in which “the Kalmuks are deprived of freedom.”48

Led by a temporary governing committee which included Darsha Remilev, Peter

Michailow and Sodman Dalantinow, this mutual aid society attempted to incorporate itself as the official Kalmyk American representational body, and from there, to make the case that they should have the right to “carry on the functions and interests of the

Kalmyks in the United States.” In other words, to make a claim on CWS and the Brethren

Service Commission that the control over the Kalmyks’ resettlement should be turned over to them. Crucially, this relinquishing of power would mean that this association, not

Brethren Service or Church World Service, would have control over the remaining finances. The group hoped to build a farm, a cultural center, a temple, and a home for elderly persons, and they believed there may be as much as $50,000 in remaining resettlement funds that could be dedicated to that cause.49

Publicly, Brethren Service and Church World Service nominally supported the creation of a Kalmyk American organization, as well as the use of any remaining

48 It is unclear to what extent this mutual aid society shared this view, though some suggested that it may have come directly from the leaders of this society, especially Remilev. There were certainly those in the Kalmyk and Russian American communities who felt that this critique was too scathing, if not wholly inaccurate. Shamba Balinov to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, March 22, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; Russian Daily, February, 1952, file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

49 Roland Elliott and Alexandra Tolstoy to “Kalmuk Friends,” June 28, 1952, Rosenfield Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Minutes of the Kalmuk Meeting Held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 9, 1952,” file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

113 resettlement funds to create a Kalmyk community center, but behind the scenes, they admitted, “we are afraid of a corporation which would include some of the former members of the Kalmuk Committee [the Kalmook National Representation in Europe] and are doing everything to woo them away.” They viewed the emergence of this organization as an internal power play by an unsavorily outspoken and aggressive group of individuals who did not represent the entire community and who wanted to use the

IRO grant to further their interests.50 Several Kalmyks who were at odds with this group agreed. In Balinov’s words, the members of the temporary committee were “jerks and good for nothings” who were spreading lies about life in the United States.

Notably, even dissenters like Balinov agreed that the IRO grant had been mismanaged and that the remainder should be dedicated to building a Kalmyk community center.51 However, Church World Service was under no obligation to relinquish control of the project, and they refused to do so. Instead, they declared that they would administer the funds for three to five additional years.52 And in what appeared to be an implicit yet serious threat, especially in the context of the Cold War Red Scare and because the Kalmyks were not yet citizens, they sent a letter to the temporary committee warning them that Philadelphia’s Russian American Club, which had helped them to constitute their society, is “listed as one engaged in un-American activities.”53

50 Joe Mow to Donald Durnbaugh, May 14, 1952, file 18, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for “woo them away,” Joe Mow to Donald Durnbaugh, April 29, 1952, file 41, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA); for “minutes,” file 26, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for public support, Fairfield to Taylor, May 10, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Joe Mow to Tolstoy, June 12, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

51 Shamba Balinov to Knut Halle, March 22, 1952, Box 1, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

52 “Suggested Agenda,” file 21, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

53 Blair Taylor to Joe Mow, May 3, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

114

New Mexico: Life, Work, and Collective Action

In the spring of 1952, a second predominating concern of the Kalmyk American community and of the Kalmyk leaders still living in Europe (many Kalmyks, including

Stepanow, Oulanoff and Balinov, were denied admission to the United States but they continued to weigh in on the project from abroad) was the plight of Kalmyks in New

Mexico. Despite pressure and threats from the Brethren Service Commission, only 101

Kalmyks agreed to go to New Mexico, and from the very beginning, most were unhappy with their living environment.54 Their initial terror was palpable. “At first many put tables and boxes before their doors at night and bedding over the windows. There was a terrible fear that someone would do them personal harm,” Coppock remembered. Coppock believed that these fears were the result of stories told to them by Halle, Kapatzinsky and

Kalmyk leaders on the East who did not want the Kalmyks to move to New Mexico. In her interpretation, they were afraid of “warlike Indians and gun bearing cowboys,” as well as rattlesnakes, bears, and atomic bomb explosions.55

While the intensity of New Mexican Kalmyks’ initial terror dissipated in a few weeks, just as it did for those who had stayed on the East Coast, the depth of their unhappiness actually increased after the first few months. Placed on ranches, family homes and businesses in rural areas, they were separated not just from the larger group in

54 Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; for 101, Mary Coppock, “Opinion Material”, July 8, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for the total number of migrants by mid-52, see July 28, 1952, file 21, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; for late- February, see Mary Coppock, Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

55 Mary Coppock to Irwin Bounds, January 21, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, July 1, 1952, “Personal and Confidential”, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 1, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, RGHC, NMSUL.

115 the East but also from each other. When the Kalmyks began to arrive in New Mexico in mid-February, Buddhist priest and unofficial leader of the group Rab-Djamba Jsurum

Sandjiew urged Coppock to reduce the planned resettlement area by a third. While she begrudgingly complied, the distance was still significant. Coppock once tabulated that the shortest route in which a person could visit each Kalmyks’ home totaled over 500 miles, and the majority of those in New Mexico either lived alone or simply with their immediate family. Lacking any means of transportation, each Kalmyk family was essentially in New Mexico alone. Almost all reported intense feelings of isolation, and for many, the condition was unbearable.56 Further compounding matters, a disproportionate number of priests had resettled in New Mexico, and their absence strained and angered the communities in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Rumors spread that Coppock had intentionally isolated religious leaders in New Mexico in order to impede the Kalmyks’ capacity to create a religious center and a thriving Buddhist community in the United States.57

It does not appear that Coppock intentionally isolated the Kalmyks’ religious leaders, but it is nonetheless true that she, Brethren Service, and the other agencies responsible for setting the terms of the Kalmyks’ migration were at least partially responsible for the Kalmyks’ extreme unhappiness in New Mexico. These agencies intentionally isolated them in rural areas that were far from existing Russian communities and from industrial jobs, despite the Kalmyks’ explicit wishes otherwise and despite

56 “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico: A Report of the Investigation Conducted by Messrs. George Cantor and Elliott Shirk during the Week of July 6, 1962,” file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh, Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 1, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, RGHC, NMSUL.

57 Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, July 1, 1952, “Personal and Confidential”, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

116 cautions by a noted Yale sociologist who warned them that isolating the Kalmyks and attempting to stymie the formation of a viable Kalmyk American community would actually impede their healthy adjustment.58 Coppock herself seemed to understand this point when she set about planning the project. “It is quite easy to understand” that dispersing and isolating refugees would cause them to “become lonesome for their relatives and language,” she wrote in early January.59 Yet this is precisely what she proceeded to do.

That this was a deeply racially stratified society only exacerbated the situation.

New Mexican Kalmyks regularly expressed discontent because of pervasive racism in

New Mexico, a fact that was also understood but disregarded by their state-sanctioned resettlers. As such, in both of these senses, the Kalmyks’ unhappiness was directly correlated to the aid agencies’ priorities.

Finally, the economic aims of the Brethren Service Commission, the Farm

Placement Service, DPC and other involved agencies and employers also contributed to the Kalmyks’ discontent. The poor wages and working conditions afforded to agricultural and domestic workers in the Southwest was a primary reason that the Kalmyks had balked at the notion of moving there in the first place. Kuldinow explained this concern to a DPC official who visited the Kalmyks’ temporary camp at Parvin Park in February of 1952. “Our public can survive through any physical work both on farms and factories, but we wish to have a chance to just earn money to feed our families and raise our children.” For farmworkers in the West, wages were low, so low that “Americans

58 Maurice R. Davis to Mr. Joseph B. Joe Mow, October 17, 1951, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

59 Mary Coppock to Vance, January 3, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

117 themselves cannot live in these places.”60 When Coppock first began searching for job placements in New Mexico, she did seem to realize that wage-based agricultural and domestic work were economically untenable occupations. “I don’t know how they get by,” Coppock remarked when she first learned how much maids were paid. Yet several months later, after working in collaboration with county extension agent Walter Wade, she had come to believe that such work was a “splendid opportunity.”61

The experiences of many Kalmyks in New Mexico bore out their initial fears, and the most prevalent Kalmyk complaint about life in New Mexico concerned labor conditions in the jobs Coppock had selected for them.62 Iwan Albataew, who was supporting a family of six, was assigned a job as goat herder. As he described it, “This field of work is not work at all, but prison. All day, I climb on the rocks from one hill to another, driven along with the goats.” The rocks wore out his shoes, but his wages were so poor that he could not buy replacements. Worse, his employer refused to give his family bedding, nor access to chickens and a dairy cow, all of which had been promised in his work contract.63

60 Kuldinow to Kapatzinsky, February 27, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML; for more on Kuldinow, Mrs. Tom Charles (Bula Charles), “Alamogordo, NM,” May 8, 1952, file 5, box 4, Bula and Tom Charles Papers, MS 18, Archives and Special Collections Department, RGHC, NMSUL; http://www.sodmankuldinow.org/.

61 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, 12.13.51, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

62 Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 10, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to David Aberle, May 9, 1952, file 1, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Elliott M. Shirk, Director of Resettlement to John W. Gibson, Chairman, Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner, and Harry N. Rosenfield, Commissioner, “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico: A Report of the Investigation Conducted by Messrs. George Cantor and Elliott Shirk during the Week of July 6, 1952,” July 24, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

63 Iwan Albataew to Donald Durnbaugh, April 22, 1952, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA (translated from the Russian by Eli Feiman and Ani Mukherji).

118

In addition to meager wages, the Kalmyks who went to New Mexico, even more so than their East Coast counterparts, incurred significant debt. When the first group arrived in New Mexico in mid-February, their placements were not yet finalized. Without jobs, they borrowed money from the Brethren Service Commission for basic expenses.

Once they obtained jobs, some went into further debt, as their employers garnished their wages to pay for their living quarters. Those who developed medical conditions, even if relatively minor, fared far worse. Erdni Mahaliew, for example, suffered from altitude sickness when he arrived in New Mexico, and as a result of doctor’s visits, he incurred debts equivalent to a half month’s wages.64

In the face of these conditions, many Kalmyks took matters into their own hands.

To Coppock’s consternation, some Kalmyks, including two individuals she had been told were “good Kalmyks” (i.e. compliant) declined their initial job offers or attempted to negotiate better terms. “They hooted at the jobs offered to them. They are determined to write their own terms,” Coppock complained.65 Others like Albataew urged aid workers to allow them out of their work contracts. “I beg of you to release me from this assignment,” Albataew wrote Mow, initially to no avail. “We must all do our best wherever we are,” Mow responded, though he later conceded and instructed Coppock to find a different employer.66 Others simply quit. Two weeks after arriving in New Mexico,

64 Mary Coppock to Roy Hiteschew, “Re: Medical Bill for Erdni Mahilaew,” April 3, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, June 17, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, May 10, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Donald Durnbaugh to Mary Coppock, December 21, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

65 Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, “Personal,” April 4, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

66 Iwan Albataew to Donald Durnbaugh, April 22, 1952, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA (translated from the Russian by Eli Feiman); Joe Mow to Albataew, April 29, 1952, file 36, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

119 twenty-five-year-old Shardu Telemischinov quit his job after finding another with better wages and work conditions.67 His first employer was furious, believing that he was bound by law to remain at this original job. The employer called Coppock, who drove to the man’s new place of employment and attempted to persuade him to return to his first job, which he finally did several hours later, but only after his new employer concurred with

Coppock. As Coppock saw it, Telemischinov and his family were “money mad,” and in quitting his job he “defied me.” As she had done before, she decided to “lay down the law.”68 Eventually, however, Coppock conceded to allow Kalmyks to find different jobs.

In mid-June, she tabulated that of the 101 Kalmyks sent to New Mexico, “only twelve

‘first’ placements worked out for mutual satisfaction,” and one man had been employed at six different jobs.69

In May of 1952 under Sandjiew’s leadership and in collaboration with the mutual aid society in Philadelphia and Kalmyks in New Jersey, New Mexican Kalmyks launched a campaign to persuade the Brethren Service Commission and CWS to permit their return to the East Coast. “We have followed your advice you gave us in New Windsor. From the first day up to date we have had to struggle very hard for our existence. But we cannot bear it any longer; our life became quite intolerable,” Sandjiew wrote CWS Director

Roland Elliott. Sandjiew explained that “we have decided therefore to move to New

Jersey and to join our Kalmucks there.” The difficulty, however, was that “we have no

67 He sought work at a Chinese restaurant called New China Cafe in Alamogordo, which became one of the most satisfactory placements.

68 Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6. Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, February 26, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

69 Mary Coppock, “Opinion Material”, July 8, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

120 money; we hardly could earn enough for food.” Sandjiew urged Elliott to use money from the IRO grant to fund their return trip.70

Elliott denied their request for funding, and with the exception of those who

Coppock deemed truly needy (only a handful of persons), the Kalmyks were not allowed to borrow money from the funds set aside for their resettlement in order to pay for their return trip.71 Church World Service and the Brethren Service Commission maintained that the Kalmyks only wanted to leave because of pressures from Kalmyks on the East

Coast and because of Sandjiew’s strong-armed manipulations. Their discontent was not reasonable, but a “sort of a hysteria of some kind” that was caused by “outside influences,” not unsavory working conditions. Additionally, while they conceded that isolating the Kalmyks from each other had made them unhappy, their unhappiness did not justify leaving their placements. Brethren Service pressured them to stay until the end of their contracts, or at least through the end of the planting season. 72

In contrast, Sol Tax, a University of Chicago anthropologist who became interested in the Kalmyk resettlement project because he believed that his field work “on

70 Rab-Djamba Sandjiev to Roland Elliott, translated by CWS, June 17, 1952, file 10, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. As Donald Durnbaugh told Joe Mow, in the first week of May alone, four people were fired and five more threatened to quit. “The general sentiment now is to return to the East as soon as money can be saved…. They feel our promises have not been lived up to and that there is little future here.” Donald Durnbaugh to Joe Mow, May 8, 1952, file 19, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

71 In a confusing turn of events, Church World Service at first agreed to offer loans to the Kalmyks who wanted to return to the East, but they later backtracked and decided to give loans only to those who they deemed incapable of funding their own trip or working in order to do so. Mary Coppock, however, determined that the vast majority should have been able to pay their way back. Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, June 24, 1952, file 14, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA); Mary Coppock to Mr. Rab-Djamba, June 24, 1952, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

72 Mary Coppock, “Opinion Material”, July 8, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, June 24, 1952, file 14, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 1, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for quote, Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, June 29, 1952, file 22, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

121 problems of Indian adjustment and assimilation” would prove relevant to this project, attributed the breakdown to “the exist[ence] among some ranchers an ideology of obtaining cheap labor and a hardened philosophy in dealing with employees.”73 While concurring that many sponsors were harsh, Durnbaugh dismissed the idea that their exploitation was the cause of their discontent. Instead, he implied that the Kalmyks’ time in the DP camps had softened them and had led them to expect too much from aid agencies. Durnbaugh believed that they were simply unwilling to climb their way up the ladder, albeit admitting that the rung they put them on was not too desirable.74

It seems that the majority of aid workers working on this project became deeply resentful, frustrated and fatigued, which may have contributed to their outright refusal to consider permitting the Kalmyks to leave New Mexico. In a letter to Bushong, Coppock wrote, “as a fond New Mexican, it is doubtful if I shall ever recover from the blow to pride that otherwise rational human beings are ‘decidedly’ opposed to New Mexico.”75

She felt that the Kalmyks were insufficiently grateful for her hard work, and she was openly irritated with what she called “dissatisfaction over trifles,” especially their complaint that while everyone says “it’s a free country,” they were not able to earn enough to live like an American. “This is enough!” an exasperated Coppock wrote in her

73 Sol Tax to Joe Mow, February 19, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

74 Donald Durnbaugh to Dave Aberle, May 9, 1952, file 1, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

Mary Coppock also conceded that some job placements had been “regrettable,” but she, too, tended to blame the Kalmyks, rather than their employers: Mary Coppock to Benjamin Bushong, April 3, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “Opinion Material”, July 8, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

75 Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, June 24, 1952, file 14, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

122 account of the project.76 “I have never seen such stupid attitudes in my life.” The

Kalmyks, she concluded, were a “temperamental people.”77 Coppock, with the support of

Church World Service and the Brethren Service Commission, told the Kalmyks that they were obligated to remain until they had earned enough money to return. Technically,

Church World Service allowed her to offer loans to those financially unable to return, but

Coppock denied most claims.78

Without the assistance of the Brethren Service or Church World Service, New

Mexican Kalmyks had no means of leaving New Mexico, and they were unable to take loans from other sources. If they sought public assistance, they could be subject to deportation. As such, the agencies’ decision was a coercive measure binding them to

New Mexico against their will.79 Further, even if they could secure a private loan, either from Church World Service or another source, their indebtedness could severely hinder their life prospects in the United States, as Coppock warned them repeatedly and

76 For “it’s a free country” complaint, Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 3, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6; for “dissatisfaction over trifles” and “enough!” see Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 3, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; and for “stupid attitudes,” Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh and Joe Mow, February 22, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

77 Mary Coppock to Donald Durnbaugh, February 26, 1952, file 39, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

78 Mary Coppock, “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

79 Mary Coppock to Alva Simpson, August 8, 1952, folder 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Harry Rosenfield, “The Sponsorship of Displaced Persons,” in Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference for Displaced Persons: April 5, 6, and 7, 1949: Hotel Stevens, Chicago, Ill. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), 8; Watson Miller, “The Public-Charge Feature of the Immigration Laws,” in Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 32–36.

For more on the history of public charge laws, Kevin Johnson, “Exclusion and Deportation of the Poor,” in The Huddled Masses Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003) 91-108; Edward J.W. Park and John S.W. Park, Probationary Americans: Contemporary Immigration Policies and the Shaping of Asian American Communities (New York: Routledge, 2005), 30–37.

123 dramatically. A cross-country train ticket cost approximately one-month’s salary, and they would be expected to repay it within a year.80

While a handful of individuals were able to circumvent Coppock’s strict loan policy on their own, their solution laid group action.81 Partnering with Halle and

Kapatzinsky, New Mexican Kalmyks brought their complaints directly to the United

States Displaced Persons Commission. In addition to alleging that Coppock placed them in racist and exploitative environments, they told the DPC that Coppock had threatened to report them for possible deportation if they left the state.82 Indeed, when they told

Coppock of their hope to return to New Mexico, she informed them that they could be deported if they left, even if they were able to do so without the use of public assistance.

As a condition of entering the United States, refugees had to sign an “Oath of Good

Faith” certifying that they were taking their assigned job in good faith. While quitting ones initial job did not automatically subject refugees to deportation, if their sponsoring agency believed they had not taken the job in good faith, they could report them to the

INS. CWS and the Brethren Service Commission had no plans to report large numbers of

Kalmyks to the INS, but the threat of deportation nonetheless functioned as a powerful coercive measure binding them to New Mexico, and Coppock did indeed consider turning in at least one person for possible deportation (though for reasons that were not

80 Mary Coppock to Elliott, notes to the translator, June 20, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Cover letter for expense statement, August 16, 1952, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Roland Elliott to Sandjiev, June 12, 1952, file 10, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

81 Coppock to Mow, “Personal and Confidential,” July 1, 1952, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

82 Elliott M. Shirk, Director of Resettlement to John W. Gibson, Chairman, Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner, and Harry N. Rosenfield, Commissioner, “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico: A Report of the Investigation Conducted by Messrs. George Cantor and Elliott Shirk during the Week of July 6, 1952,” July 24, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

124 directly related to the effort to leave New Mexico).83 The DPC concluded that the

Kalmyks had misunderstood pressure for a threat. In their estimation, the Brethren

Service’s response had been reasonable, but with the compliance of David Elliott of

Church World Service, they ordered the Brethren Service Commission to permit their return to the East Coast. 84

Conclusion and Implications

The DPC’s determination was a result of an investigation by the Commission’s

General Counsel, George Cantor, and its Director of Resettlement, Elliott Shirk. Cantor and Shirk examined the working conditions of each of the 101 Kalmyks living in New

Mexico, and their conclusions prove revealing. After interviewing employers, aid workers and individual DPs, they concluded that the blame for this failed project—if it were indeed to be considered a failure, they were careful to note—lay squarely with the

Kalmyks themselves. Rather than racism or mistreatment by employers, “psychological factors” (loneliness and undue pressure from the Kalmyks in New Jersey) were the source of the problem. White New Mexicans, the report claimed, universally saw the

Kalmyks as white people, and the employment and living conditions were overwhelmingly satisfactory. This resettlement project was no more exploitative than any

83 Coppock to Mow, June 24, 1952, file 14, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Hiteschew, June 29, 1952, file 35, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Vance, January 3, 1952, file 38, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

84 Elliott M. Shirk, Director of Resettlement to John W. Gibson, Chairman, Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner, and Harry N. Rosenfield, Commissioner, “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico: A Report of the Investigation Conducted by Messrs. George Cantor and Elliott Shirk during the Week of July 6, 1952,” July 24, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

125 other, Shirk concluded. If anything, the Kalmyks’ employers were unusually generous and understanding, as were Coppock and the various involved agencies.85

The DPC report compared the Kalmyk resettlement project with other DP resettlement projects by way of dismissing the Kalmyks’ claims. As its author, DPC

Resettlement Director Elliott Shirk put it in a letter to Alexandra Tolstoy, “If the project in New Mexico is to be condemned, it would follow therefore that most projects throughout the Nation, particularly agriculture, should be also, which certainly would be unwarranted.”86 But Brethren Service’s own records confirm that aid workers approached this migration as a labor migration in which the core task was to find employers. To resettle a DP was to locate a person in a job, and aid workers’ alignment was with wealthy ranchers and farmers, not the Kalmyks themselves. In its exoneration of the

Brethren Service and of New Mexican ranchers, the DPC report dismissed the notion that

New Mexican labor conditions were a cause for alarm. While this dismissal is unsurprising since the DPC was involved in Kalmyk resettlement from the start, it is nonetheless critical in what it suggests about resettlement more generally. Should we take

Shirk’s comparison to mean that this approach to resettlement was an accepted, standard practice? Or was this simply acceptable for refugees of color?

To be sure, the fact that the Kalmyks were a group of color influenced resettlers’ decision making at each stage in the process. It justified their dismissal of the Kalmyks’

85 “Elliott M. Shirk, Director of Resettlement to John W. Gibson, Chairman, Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner, and Harry N. Rosenfield, Commissioner, “The Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico: A Report of the Investigation Conducted by Messrs. George Cantor and Elliott Shirk during the Week of July 6, 1952,” July 24, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, “Re: DP Commission Visit, July 12, 1952, file 9, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Elliott Shirk to Benjamin Bushong, August 6, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock, “Opinion Material”, July 8, 1952, file 8, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

86 Ibid, and for quote, Elliott Shirk to Alexandra Tolstoy, July 29, 1952, file 28, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

126 concerns and their attempts to have a voice in their own resettlement. It influenced the particular way that the involved agencies conceptualized of how the Kalmyks would fit into the American economic scene. It buttressed the agencies’ insistence that the

Kalmyks were agriculturalists despite indications otherwise, and it justified their refusal to allow them to live in populated areas. Racism played a role in the decision to house them at Seabrook Farms. It lay behind their abrupt removal from New Jersey, it played a role in the Kalmyks’ negative experience in New Mexico, and it lay behind Coppock’s final conclusion that Kalmyks were a people with “a terribly selfish, grasping nature.”87

Yet while race sculpted the way that the Kalmyks’ resettlement manifested as an economic project, it does not fully account for the fact that it was one. That the Kalmyks’ resettlers began the process by assessing their occupational skills and seeking out potential employers was not their unitary decision. With the exception of married women, all adult refugees were required to have an advanced job offer as a condition of their very eligibility to immigrate to the United States. The voluntary agency assigned to their case was responsible for procuring an American sponsor who would not only guarantee this job, but also offer them housing and pledge to make sure that their sponsored DPs would not need to seek public assistance. The insistence by CWS, Brethren Service, the DPC, and the Farm Placement Service on agricultural and domestic labor placements was also indicative of the structure and orientation of the DP program more broadly. So, too, were many other themes in this case study: volagencies’ collaboration with business groups; their willingness to place refugees in substandard working conditions; their rejection of the notion that refugees should have a say over their living conditions in the United

87 Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 6, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

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States; their prioritization of employers’ interests over refugees’; their insistence on orchestrating DPs’ rapid dispersal and compelling their assimilation, no matter the impact on the DPs’ well-being; their use of coercion, surveillance and threats of deportation to discipline refugees into docile laboring subjects and to stymie the emergence of refugee self-determination; and their collaboration with individuals and agencies that were involved in other foreign labor programs. Indeed, the Kalmyk resettlement project, despite its uniqueness in many ways, actually helps to uncover a more central thread in the history and origins of refugee resettlement in the United States: that it was conceived of as an economic project. Refugees were workers and the task of resettlement was to place these workers in jobs. And further, that it was so in a way that was coercive and tied up in other imperatives, from compelling refugees’ assimilation to preventing the formation of ethnic enclaves to managing perceived racial threats to the nation.

Crucially, the Kalmyk resettlement project was all of these things at once, and at the same time, it was legitimately thought of as a humanitarian endeavor and a distinctly religious project. Administered by religious groups and individuals, resettlers seemed to have legitimately seen themselves as motivated by moral imperatives. Religious groups and individuals were the free laborers for this state project—laborers who were willing to work for free because of resettlement’s moral stakes and veneer. In a revealing moment, they referred to themselves as “Christian workers.” In many cases, their involvement came at great personal sacrifice. The Brethren parishioners who administered the Parvin

Park camps, for example, made only $15 per month, and Coppock, who sometimes worked 16 hour days, earned little more than room, board and expenses.88

88 For Christian workers, Mary Coppock, “Kalmuk Resettlement Project in New Mexico,” August 28, 1952, 5, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Mary Coppock to Joe Mow, August 4, 1952, file 9, box 1, 128

The Kalmyk resettlement project was also a religious or moral project in the sense that these groups, from the U.S. decision to admit them to the agencies that decided to become involved, hoped that it would project something about their essential moral character. The darker aspects of this narrative were almost universally excised from the official BSC, CWS and Tolstoy Foundation narratives of this project. The decision to send them to New Mexico, for example, is universally narrated as an honest misunderstanding, sometimes even implying that they made this decision because the

Kalmyks themselves had insisted they were agriculturalists. The conflict over their return, is never mentioned, nor is the agencies’ threats of deportation and their exertion of financial and social control over the Kalmyks.89

The remainder of this dissertation focuses on the construction of resettlement as an economic project, and it does so in a way that was inspired by and emerged from many of the threads in the Kalmyks’ experience, from the way that resettlers’ insistence on agricultural and domestic labor placements was racialized to the focus on dispersal, the use of church networks, and the idea of resettlement as a moral endeavor. The next chapter lays the foundation for this exploration by exposing rootedness of the notion that resettlement should function as a labor placement project and the rootedness of the idea that DPs should work as farmers and domestic workers, and it provides historical and ideological context and explanation for the Kalmyks’ and other DPs’ construction as such. Each of these chapters makes their own independent argument about the U.S.

Series 4/1/6, BHLA. For information about how much Coppock worked, Mary Coppock, “The Other Side of the Kalmyk Story”, 4, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

89 Bushong to Smith, February 15, 1952, file 27, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; Ruth Early, “The Enculturation of the Kalmyks in Philadelphia,” file 31, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

129 resettlement regime as it emerged through the DP migration. It is my hope that each of these chapters also enriches our understanding of the Kalmyks’ experiences, and that their story in turn enriches these arguments, helping us to remember that this was always about real people.

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UNIT TWO

The Social Movement for DP Admissions, 1946-1948

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CHAPTER THREE

Refugee Advocates and the Promotion of

Refugee Admissions as a Labor Importation

“I have a thousand muscles screaming for one of those refugees to till my garden.” ~ Congressperson Noah Mason, 19471

During the summer 1947 hearings for H.R. 2910, the first and most permissive

DP bill introduced in Congress, the bill’s sponsor, Illinois Republican William Stratton, explained that the intention was to select the most able refugees and to transform them into “productive citizens, productive workers.” New Jersey Republican H. Alexander

Smith, who helped to persuade Homer Ferguson (R-MI) to introduce a similar version in the Senate, concurred. During a floor debate about a later version of the bill, he explained

1 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, a Bill to Authorize the United States During an Emergency Period to Undertake Its Fair Share in the Resettlement of Displaced Persons in Germany, Austria, and Italy, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 80 (1947) (testimony of Hon. Noah M. Mason, Representative in Congress from Illinois).

132 that the expectation was that each refugee would “be an asset to the U.S. through the work he [sic] will do.”2 Indeed, as this chapter explores, not only Stratton and Smith, but nearly all of the legislators, public figures and everyday Americans who spoke in favor of

DP admissions routinely suggested that a primary purpose of their resettlement was to put them to work for the American economy.

Drawing on editorials sent to major American newspapers, on policy discourse,

(including House and Senate hearings, floor debates, and briefs prepared by outside organizations), and on the organizational records of the Citizens Committee on Displaced

Persons (CCDP), which was an influential and effective pro-admissions lobby, this chapter looks at how proponents of refugee admissions configured DP admissions as an economic endeavor. As Stratton’s and Smith’s comments suggest and as this chapter argues, advocates routinely constructed refugees as workers and their U.S. resettlement as a state-sponsored labor importation.

The first three sections of this chapter flesh out this argument. Together, they show how the figure of the DP as a worker emerged at the nexus of restrictionist and liberalizer discourses and political mobilizations and in the context of a deep-seated ideological milieu in which potential citizen subjects’ deservedness of belonging was directly correlated to their laboring capacities and proclivities. Additionally, I locate

2 For “productive workers,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 27 (1947) (testimony of Hon. William Stratton, Representative in Congress from Illinois); for “asset to the U.S.,” 94 Cong. Rec. 6403 (1948); for Smith’s role in Ferguson’s decision to introduce the Senate companion bill, Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 149, 169.

Throughout this chapter, I modify speakers’ usage of the universal male subject/pronoun with “sic” for two reasons: both as a reminder that a substantial portion of the DP population were women, and also to draw attention to the gendered assumptions embedded within discussions about DPs as workers. Speakers’ overreliance on male pronouns was not simply an effect of mid-century language conventions, but of how the figure of the DP as a worker centered disproportionately on male DPs, despite the fact that most women DPs were also treated as workers.

133 advocates’ decision to frame resettlement as a labor migration in several other key historical contexts and common senses: in a broader range of economic arguments for DP admissions, in post-World War II/early Cold War refugee policymaking writ large, and in the context of an emerging international refugee resettlement regime in which nations across the globe regularly treated DPs as a source of cheap labor. In tracing the on-the- ground history of DP political mobilizations and in connecting advocates’ representations of DPs to these broader contexts, this chapter underscores the deep political and ideological rootedness of this approach to refugee resettlement—an approach that was borne out in the Kalmyks’ lived experience—and it does so without losing site of the more immediate political contexts and historical actors.

What kind of jobs would refugee workers occupy? The last half of this chapter investigates this question. It demonstrates that refugee advocates constructed DPs as farmers and domestic workers, or barring that, as persons who would nonetheless join the ranks of these economic sectors. By mid-century, these sectors were nearly fully solidified as low-wage occupations outside of the purview of federal labor protections, and they were marked by poor working conditions and exploitative labor practices.

Rather than paper over that reality, advocates trumpeted the fact that refugees would be funneled into these marginalized sectors. In suggesting that refugees should be made to work as agricultural or domestic laborers, advocates intentionally and deliberately framed resettlement as an endeavor in which refugees could be treated as a source of cheap labor.

In other words, refugee resettlement, according to proponents’ own rhetoric, would be a very specific sort of labor migration: one that would funnel these foreign workers into the nation’s most undesirable economic sectors.

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The underlying purpose of this chapter is to make the case that policymakers envisioned refugee admissions an economic endeavor, and more specifically as a labor migration. The decision to demonstrate this fact here is perhaps not unexpected, as establishing this point lays the groundwork for this dissertation’s broader exploration of the economic formations of the U.S. refugee resettlement system as it came into being during the years after World War II and also because it picks up on one of the more predominant themes in the Kalmyks’ resettlement experience. Yet the emphasis on pro- admissions groups may seem counterintuitive. After all, it was the restrictionist-crafted

1948 Displaced Persons Act, not the liberalizer-supported Stratton Bill, that explicitly constructed DPs as workers.3 The choice to make this case through a study of DPs’ strongest advocates, not the nativist organizations and policymakers who pushed through the final legislation, was prompted by a desire to underscore the extent to which resettlement was imagined as a labor placement project from the very start and by DPs’ most ardent supporters, most of whom, who like the religious organizations and individuals who orchestrated the Kalmyks’ resettlement, did not at all conceptualize themselves as motivated by economic interests. Looking at admissions activists is also important because their monumental lobbying campaign was responsible not only for the massive shift in public opinion in favor of DP admissions, but for setting the discursive parameters that would shape the discussions about refugee admissions for years to come.

Despite the elision of this fact in historical scholarship and in the legal theories that buttress the field of refugee law as wholly separate entity from regular immigration

3 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Emergency Temporary Displaced Persons Admissions Act, H.R. 2910, 80th Cong. (1947).

135 policy, refugee admissions was envisioned as a labor migration at its very discursive inception.

The Citizens Committee on Displaced Person and the Figure of the Refugee as a

Worker

While the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 was the United States’ first refugee law, it was not, in fact, the first measure aimed at facilitating post-World War II refugees’ immigration to the United States. In December of 1945 Harry Truman issued a

Presidential directive permitting the reallocation of unused visas from the war years to

European displaced persons in the American zone of occupied Europe. This measure, which came to be known as the Truman Directive, proved largely ineffective, both due to administrative hurdles and to the fact that most DPs were from nations with extremely small immigration quotas, even with the addition of the unused slots from the war. By the late summer of 1946, fully eight months into the program, only several thousand DPs had been able to enter the United States under the directive, and over one million remained in the U.S. zone, a vast majority of whom refused repatriation to their country of birth.

These so-called “unrepatriatable” refugees included DPs from Russia or Soviet- dominated countries, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, , Estonia, Yugoslavia and Poland, who feared persecution upon return, often because of their opposition to communism or because they had collaborated with German forces during the war. The other significant group of definitively unrepatriatable refugees were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors had been housed in these austere DP camps, some of which were former concentration camps, since the end of the war, and more than

136

100,000 others entered the U.S. zone in 1946 fleeing post-war pogroms in Poland and elsewhere.4

In August of 1946, as other options dwindled and the political implications of

DPs’ continued presence in Europe grew more pronounced in the face of worsening tensions with the Soviet Union, Truman issued a public statement urging Congress to pass special legislation permitting the entry of an unspecified number of refugees into the

United States. Polls suggested that the public and Congress alike overwhelmingly disapproved of such a measure, and few observers believed that a DP admissions act stood any chance of passage. The announcement nonetheless marked a turning point in

Jewish American groups’ struggles to win some sort of recourse for the 200,000-250,000

Jewish survivors living in these camps. With little likelihood that Britain would authorize their settlement in Palestine, the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), under the leadership of philanthropist Lessing Rosenwald, redirected its efforts and established a committee to explore the prospect of bringing about a mass entry of Holocaust survivors into the United States. At the same time, the larger and more well-established American

Jewish Committee (AJC) independently began to step up its efforts to toward this goal.

Spearheaded by New York lawyer Irving Engle, the AJC’s administrative subcommittee on immigration sought out prominent national figures and organizations to promote this cause and distributed publicity materials in favor of DP admissions and immigration

4 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 112–4; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 20, 36–7; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 3–7; Daniel G. Cohen, “Remembering Post-War Displaced Persons: From Omission to Resurrection,” in Enlarging European Memory: Migration Movements in Historical Perspective, ed. Mareike K nig and Ranier Ohiger (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2006), 89–90; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 1–2; President, Statement and Directive, “Immigration to United States of Certain Displaced Persons and Refugees in Europe, Statement and Directive 225,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (December 22, 1945).

137 reform more generally. With Rosenwald’s strong financial backing and the AJC’s large staff of skilled lobbyists, public relations specialists, and policy experts, the two organizations joined forces in the early fall, marking a decisive moment in the rise of what would become one of the most well-organized and effective political lobbies at that time.5

As historian Leonard Dinnerstein explains in his definitive work on this effort to convince Congress to pass a law authorizing DPs’ resettlement in the United States, the

AJC and ACJ were fully cognizant of the uphill battle ahead. Public opinion ran seven to one against admitting DPs, and while these organizations were predominantly interested in helping Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, the fact that many DPs were Jews was precisely why many Americans opposed the measure. As such, the AJC and ACJ decided to frame their efforts more broadly, focusing on all European DPs, 80 percent of whom, as they regularly emphasized, were Protestant or Catholic, not Jewish. During the fall of that year, these organizations secured support for a DP admissions act from range of prominent individuals and national organizations that spanned the political spectrum, and they began to work closely with allies in the State Department and Truman administration. In November, the AJC and ACJ orchestrated a gathering of a large group of eminent Americans, almost none of whom were Jews, and together, they announced the formation of the nondenominational Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons. The

CCDP was a self-described “political action and propaganda group” whose primary aim was to “swing public sentiment in favor of relaxing immigration laws in order to admit a

5 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 115-125; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 68-9; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 14; President, Statement, “White House Statement on Palestine and on the Problem of Displaced Persons in General, Statement 212,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (August 16, 1946).

138 fair share of displaced persons to this country.” The CCDP hired a team of experienced fieldworkers who worked in collaboration with the AJC staff in gaining the support of the nation’s most prominent and respectable national organizations, ranging from labor unions and business groups to religious and social welfare organizations to veterans and patriotic societies.6 Within six months, the CCDP had garnered the support of over 250 groups, but as Dinnerstein explains, the majority of non-Jewish supporters were “less than dynamic,” which “thereby left the Jews with the overwhelming responsibility for promoting the CCDP and its issue.”7

While the majority of those who favored DP admissions did not become highly involved its day-to-day promotion, the sheer volume of individuals and organizations who eventually issued their support for this measure was staggering. From an unprecedentedly unpopular proposal to one of the most widely supported bills in

Congress, this reversal of public opinion was, in Irving Engle’s words, “very little short of miraculous.”8 As Dinnerstein and other historians have documented, credit for this reversal owed not just to advocates’ astute political maneuverings, but to their careful attention to how DPs and the proposed admissions act were represented. The volume of publicity materials prepared by the CCDP (which included brochures, pamphlets and even a motion picture; ghostwritten editorials and other public statements officially

6 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 115-137; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 70-71; for “swing public sentiment,” Minutes of Immigration Sub-Committee Luncheon, November 5, 1946, American Jewish Committee, quoted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 122.

7 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 66; for “less than dynamic,” Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust., 136. Jewish advocates were also left with the task of financing the endeavor as contributions from secular organizations and from Christian organizations amounted to less than 10% of the CCDP’s total operating budget. As one Minnesota pastor explained, “quite frankly it was a Jewish problem [and] the church leaders shied away from assisting the campaign morally or financially,” quoted in Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 66.

8 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 146-153, quote on 151.

139 released by constituent organizations; and appeals to hundreds of different groups and thousands of individuals), as well as the materials and statements by the range of other individuals, groups and policymakers who supported refugee admissions (materials that, even when prepared independently of the CCDP, generally resonated with the discursive maneuvering that were first put into play by the ACJ, AJC and CCDP in collaboration with other early supporters of DP admissions) sheds light on advocates’ logic in this promotion. DPs were depicted as morally upstanding victims of Nazism and

Communism; as Protestants or Catholics, rather than Jews; and as persons who had been forced into slave labor by the Germans during the WWII or who had fled afterwards upon the Soviet occupation of their home country, generally a Baltic nation. The proposed admissions act, which was written by legal experts affiliated with the CCDP and introduced by Representative William Stratton, who was a conservative Republican from the traditionally restrictionist Midwest and who was handpicked by the CCDP for precisely that reason, was portrayed as a one-time measure that would not lead to broader immigration reforms. The proposed admissions total of 400,000 was explained as the

United States’ rational “fair share” based on comparative population totals between the

United States and other potential resettlement nations (in reality, this figure was AJC analysts’ estimate of the necessary overall number in order for 100,000 Jews to gain entry), and the entire prospect of admitting DPs was presented as an opportunity to demonstrate the nation’s underlying moral core to the global community while also advancing other key geopolitical aims.9

9 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 123-36; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 70-77; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 9-14; Bernard John Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims”; Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 23–5; Tichenor, Dividing Lines,184–5.

140

Equally pervasive within advocates’ very carefully and deliberately framed discourse around this issue—yet almost entirely overlooked by existing scholarship on this movement—was an insistence on portraying DPs as skilled, eager workers and their resettlement in the United States as a project in which the goal would be to put them to work for the American economy. Not just Stratton and Smith, but nearly every person and organization who spoke out publicly in favor of DP admissions mentioned these core points, as did CCDP fieldworkers in the thousands of letters written to potential supporting organizations. In the words of supporters, the “paramount consideration” of this entire endeavor would be to bring “the greatest benefit to ourselves.” Through a rigorous selection process, immigration officers would choose “the kind of people who will be assets to us,” namely workers whose skills were in great demand. And through the carefully controlled resettlement process, government and private agencies would place refugees in regions with critical labor shortages and match them with employers, all but guaranteeing, as Ferguson put it, that each would become “an asset to the U.S. through the work he [sic] will do.”10

Within these policy discussions and pro-admissions pleas, the idea that DPs were workers was often framed not just as a policy goal, but as an identity. In other words, laborers were what DPs were, not simply what they would be made to do upon arrival.

The approximately one million refugees remaining in U.S.-administered camps were often described not as one million men and women, nor as one million victims of war or persecution, but as one million ripe and ready workers. In no uncertain terms, “displaced

10 For “paramount consideration,” 94 Cong. Rec. 6190 (1948); for “greatest benefit to ourselves” and “assets to us,” Milwaukee Journal, February 22, 1947; and for Ferguson 94 Cong. Rec. 6403 (1948).

141 persons are workers,” explained numerous letters, statements and pamphlets by the

CCDP.11

In addition to the sheer ubiquity of such statements, what is perhaps most marked about the framing of DPs as workers and their resettlement as a labor migration was the lengths that advocates went to make this point. In an exceedingly common rhetorical move, DP advocates regularly claimed that DPs’ wartime persecution and survival were evidence of their laboring abilities and physical strength and that their subsequent desperation was a veritable guarantee that if allowed to enter the United States, they would become some of the nation’s most dependable, hard-working laborers. In a letter to the Independence, Iowa Chamber of Commerce, CCDP chairperson Earl Harrison explained that fact that the DPs were trained, able laborers was precisely “why the

Germans brought them into their country during the war.” A legislative supporter of the

Stratton Bill touted DPs as particularly “sturdy, able” laborers because “they had to be [in order] to survive what killed so many of their fellows slave workers under the Nazis.”

“They are in a real sense chosen people—people who have been chosen by a ruthless process of natural selection,” added a physician who submitted a letter to the editor of the

New York Post.12 Echoing these formulations, an editorialist whose column was entered into Congress’s official record referred to DPs as the “strong backs, good brains and energy that Hitler kept from us” and the potential admissions act as the United States’

11 For example, Earl G. Harrison to Mr. Ralph L. Johnson, Executive Secretary, New Albany, Indiana Chamber of Commerce,” November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

12 For Harrison, Earl G. Harrison to R.W. O’Connor, Independence Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, IRSA Records, IHRC; for “they had to be”, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 79 (1947) (testimony of Hon. Noah M. Mason, Representative in Congress from Illinois); for “chosen people,” Dr. Daniel A. Polling, New York Post, November 20, 1946.

142

“chance to get some of [them].” The fact that they were “desperately eager” to restart their lives, another advocate claimed, meant that they would bring this same grit and determination to their new lives in the United States and to the American economy.13

To be sure, some proponents of refugee admissions criticized the extent to which mainstream policy discourse emphasized economic concerns over the humanitarian rationale for admitting refugees. Rhode Island Democrat Howard McGrath, for example, admonished his colleagues during a Senate debate, urging them to acknowledge that the

“human effects are more important [than the economic ones].” In McGrath’s view, “If the life of one of these persons is salvaged, if an opportunity is provided for one of these little families to start life anew, that is more important.” Yet regardless of their other concerns and regardless of the moral frame that they simultaneously placed upon their position,

McGrath and others still highlighted the potential economic benefits of this migration.14

“Only the Dregs Remain:” Restrictionists and the Refugee (non)Worker

During the Congressional hearings for the Stratton Bill, one of the most vocal restrictionists on the committee, Texas Democrat Ed L. Gossett, asked Stratton if he agreed that the “best interests of the United States” was the final, ultimate, core criterion upon which legislators should make their decision and upon which the resettlement program should be based. Stratton responded unequivocally: “definitely, definitely.”15

For the first time that day, Gossett and Stratton wholeheartedly agreed. Yet while Gossett

13 For “strong backs,” New York Post, editorial, April 16, 1947; for “desperately eager,” Earl G. Harrison to R.W. O’Connor, Independence Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

14 94 Cong. Rec. 6581 (1948).

15 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 29 (1947) (testimony of Hon. William Stratton, Representative in Congress from Illinois).

143 and other restrictionists did not object to liberalizers’ vision of refugee resettlement as a state-sponsored labor importation, they did object to liberalizers’ depiction of DPs’ character as workers. “They do not want to work and will not work,” declared

Representative Eugene Cox, which (among other reasons) made them the “least desirable people of all of Europe.” Cox, who later referred to DPs as “the scum of the earth,” may have used extreme language, but amongst restrictionists, his views were mainstream.16

Like Cox, who a TIME editorial once referred to as a “tousle-haired Dixie demagogue,” many restrictionists were Democrats from Southern states. At mid-century,

Southern Democrats were notorious in their opposition to all legislation and reforms that threatened to upset the nation’s existent ethnoracial regimes, and DP admissions threatened to just that on at least two accounts. First, because it would permit the entry of large numbers of Jews and Eastern Europeans, both of whom, especially Jewish DPs,

Southern Democrats opposed on racial grounds. (While the Kalmyks were not yet on legislators’ radars, they would have certainly been aghast that they might enter the United

States through a DP admissions act. In fact, the notion that a potential , even if it was explicitly limited to Europe, might “open the floodgates” to refugees in Asia was a commonly articulated concern). And second, because doing so would require some type of circumvention of the quota system for immigrant admissions, if only provisionally.

These Southern Democrats were joined by conservative Republicans from the West and

Midwest, regions that CCDP Executive Secretary William Bernard remembered as particularly resistant because they were the “historical heartland of isolationism.”

16 “Arguments Frequently Raised against Admission of Displaced Persons,” folder 13, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; for “do not want to work,” 94 Cong. Rec. 7732 (1948); for “scum of the earth,” quoted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 173.

144

Alliances between conservatives of both parties were common during the post-war period, as conservative Republicans frequently partnered with Southern Democrats to oppose domestic social reforms as well as legislation that was seen as taking too large or too magnanimous of a role in international affairs. On the question of refugee admissions, this legislative alliance was buttressed by the support of nationalist organizations like the

Daughters of the American Revolution and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as well as by vigorous lobbying of fringe right wing organizations.17 The influence of Congressional restrictionists was heightened by the November, 1946 elections when Republicans swept the national elections and took control of both the House of Representatives and the

Senate.

This section explores how restrictionists, both inside and outside of Congress, portrayed DPs as subpar workers as a means of discounting liberalizers’ valorization of the refugee subject, of questioning the extent to which their migration could benefit the national economy, and of issuing their race-based opposition to this proposal. In making this case, this section documents how liberalizers’ undue emphasis on DPs as workers often emerged in direct response to opponents’ arguments. And it demonstrates how the figure of the DP—if framed as a good worker or as a bad one—was nonetheless consistently constructed around this central question.

This coalition of restrictionist policymakers and interest groups maligned DPs’ character in ways that extended beyond questioning their laboring capacity. Ed Gossett,

17 William Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States: How the Law Was Changed to Admit Displaced Persons,” International Migration (1975): 3–20; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 137–161; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 13–4. For “tousle-haired Dixie demagogue,” “The Revolt that Failed,” TIME, January 30, 1950, accessed April 30, 2009, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,856475,00.html; for “historical heartland of restrictionism,” Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States,” 13.

145 for example, alleged that they were the “refuse of Europe:” Jews, communist agents,

“bums, criminals, black-marketeers, subversives, revolutionists, and crackpots of all colors and hues.” For Gossett and other restrictionists, especially those from Southern states, the idea that most DPs were either Jews, communists or both was the most damning of these concerns. As Senator Revercomb allegedly admitted behind closed doors, “We could solve this DP problem all right if we could work out some bill that would keep out the Jews.”18 In addition to these accusations, restrictionists routinely questioned DPs’ character as workers, and throughout the course of these debates over the various DP admissions bills presented between 1947 and 1948, restrictionists’ gave four main explanations for this accusation.

First, many suggested that other nations had already “skimmed the cream” of the

DP population, taking the best, most productive laborers. The remaining were too weak or too old to be of use to the United States. In the words of one policymaker, “only the dregs remain.” The result, according to an editorial in an Ohio newspaper, was that

“America would become in large degree a dumping ground for the undesirables.”19

Second, and in direct contestation of advocates’ notion that DPs’ wartime survival was evidence of their strength and determination, restrictionists suggested that DPs’ persecution by the Nazis and the years spent in DP camp caused them to degenerate. John

Williamson, the assistant director of legislative affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, voiced this argument during his Congressional testimony. “They are the resultant product

18 For Gossett, quoted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 173, and for Revercomb, Ibid, 139-40.

19 For “skimmed the cream” and “dregs”, 94 Cong. Rec. 6568 (1948); for “dumping ground,” “Immigration Paradox,” editorial, July 1, 1947, quoted by Louis E. Graham in Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 371-2 (1947).

146 of systematic starvation and enforced slavery, a group which has struggled to survive for seven years or more in a lawless bestial environment which reduced many … [to] the

‘animal level.’”20

Third, restrictionists suggested that their very presence in the camps after millions of others had been repatriated was in itself already proof of their unwillingness to work.

This argument questioned liberalizers’ version of history and their narrativization of DPs’ moral character. Rather than innocent victims of Nazism or Soviet aggression, these refugees fled to DP camps in order “to avoid their share in the responsibility for creating a new freedom and civilization in Europe,” explained Williamson. Restrictionists on the

House Subcommittee on Immigration appeared to be particularly swayed by this argument, and after Williamson’s testimony, they repeatedly refuted other witnesses’ claims that DPs were hard workers by suggesting that they were persons who “displaced themselves” and betrayed their home countries in order to avoid the labor of rebuilding

Europe. “If they shirk responsibility abroad they will certainly assume none here,”

Gossett concluded.21

Finally, restrictionists made cultural or race-based arguments to substantiate their claims that DPs would be substandard workers. According to one lawmaker, Eastern

Europeans were accustomed to “paternalism [and] semifuedal governments,” and as a result they “know nothing of our type of society, our type of free enterprise.” While these

20 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 313 (1947) (Statement of John C. Williamson, Assistant Director, Legislative Service, Veterans of Foreign Wars).

21 Ibid, and for Gossett, 93 Cong. Rec. 8268 (1948), reprinted in Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 405 (1947).

147 remarks were putatively leveled against the entire camp population, as nearly all DPs were from Eastern European nations, in general, claims about DPs’ cultural or racial incompatibility with hard work were most pointedly directed toward Jews. For example, a 1946 report written by Senator George Meader for the Senate’s Special Committee to

Investigate the National Defense Program alleged that Jewish DPs “do not desire to work, but expect to be cared for and complain when things are not as well done as they thing they should be.” Meader reported that his informants told him that no more than 400 of every 3,000 Jews “do any work, even fixing up their own dwelling space. When [camp leaders] do get any work out of them it was because of offering special inducements, such as extra cigarettes.” While the Meader Report was widely condemned as blatantly Anti-

Semitic, it was an exception in that respect. Anti-Semitic arguments, both explicit and thinly veiled, were a hallmark of DP opposition, and they infused worker-based charges while also standing alone as a dominant reason to oppose the bill.22

Advocates of DP admissions dismissed opponents’ depictions of DPs as unwilling, unable workers as “specious,” “absurd,” and “a conspiracy of distortion and misrepresentation,” and they mounted a careful campaign to dispel such claims.23 During

22 “Meader’s DP Report Criticized as Unfair,” New York Times, January 2, 1947, 13; George Meader, interview by Charles T. Morrissey, June 12, 1963, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO, accessed June 11, 2010, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/meaderg.htm. For Meader Report, George Meader, “Special Report to the Senate Committee Investigating the National Defense Program,” November 22, 1946, in Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 416-423 (1947); for “paternalism and semi-feudal governments,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 315 (1947) (statement of John C. Williamson, Assistant Director, Legislative Service, Veterans of Foreign Wars).

23 “Arguments Frequently Raised Against Admission of Displaced Persons,” n.d., file 13: “Analysis of Bills ca 1947,” box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC. For “specious,” 94 Cong. Rec. 6568 (1948); for “absurd,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 200 (1947) (statement filed by William C. Gausmann, Washington Representative of

148 the House hearings for the Stratton Bill, for example, the CCDP, in collaboration with advocates in the State Department and the Truman administration, arranged for top government officials to directly refute these arguments and testify to the bill’s utility to the U.S. economy and to DPs’ eagerness to work.24 Many offered an itemized accounting of refutations for each restrictionist claim, within which responses to the economic arguments figured prominently. Assistant Secretary of Labor Philip Hannah assured

Congress that the bill offered the “solution most beneficial to America,” and he chastised opponents for their apparent “loss of faith in the potentialities of our free-enterprise system, a loss of faith in America as the land of unlimited opportunity.”25 Jerry Sage, a

Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, devoted his testimony to giving lawmakers substantive, detailed explanations of DPs’ characteristics as workers and assured the committee that refugees will “respond terrifically … to an opportunity to work and dig new roots.” He emphasized that other nations have been “completely satisfied” with them as workers. Sage even brought in knitted items and carved boxes made by DPs as evidence of their deep aversion to idleness.26 Secretary of State George Marshall, who along with Secretary of War George Patton was one of the most prominent government witnesses, detailed the vocational training available to DPs and declared that “all the Socialist Party in support of H.R. 2910); for “conspiracy of distortion,” ibid, 302 (statement filed by Arthur G. Klein, Representative in Congress from New York).

24 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 143-5; “Minutes of Meeting – Executive Committee, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons,” March 28, 1947, 1, file 5, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

25 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 445-476 (1947) (statement of Philip Hannah, Assistant Secretary of Labor).

26 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 361, 368, 380 (1947) (Lt Col. Jerry M. Sage, United States Army).

149 responsible reports agree that the average displaced person, far from being lazy, inefficient, and irresponsible, is eager to rebuild his [sic] life through hard, constructive work and is ready and able to accept responsibility.”27

In the more than one year between the introduction of the Stratton Bill and the passage of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, pro-admissions legislators continued to tout refugees’ employment potential. They compiled extensive data and used it to directly silence opponents. They carefully sculpted their testimonies with the assistance of the

CCDP and the State Department, which hired a full time congressional consultant whose sole task was to push through refugee-related legislation. Some, like Senator H.

Alexander Smith, visited the camps and shared their personal observations with other lawmakers and with the national media. Another hung photos of DPs at work in the halls and lobbies of the statehouse. Materials from the CCDP continued to directly counter restrictionist claims that DPs were nonworkers, and CCDP and AJC fieldworkers even planted editorials in papers throughout the country in order to dispel these claims.28

International, Historical, Ideological and Geopolitical Contexts

The fact that much of advocates’ rhetoric about DPs as laborers and resettlement as a labor placement project was articulated as a response to restrictionist outcry seems to suggest that the undue emphasis on them as workers was, at least in part, a strategic move to preempt and dispel this opposition. If DPs and resettlement had been depicted differently, Congressional and public dissent would have surely been more severe, both

27 Ibid, 503-521 (statement of Hon. George C. Marshall, Secretary of State); Ibid, 522-531 (statement of Hon. Robert P. Patterson, Secretary of War).

28 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 127, 135, 158. For an example of the use of data to silence opponents, 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948).

150 because restrictionists consistently used this concern to mask other, more controversial reasons for their opposition and because a lingering sense of economic vulnerability continued to pervade the nation as Americans’ memory of the Great Depression remained vivid and their faith in the post-war economic recovery had yet to fully solidify.29 State

Department, CCDP, and Congressional strategists were keenly aware of these facts, and from the start, they viewed the representation of DPs as workers and resettlement of as an economic project as a necessary condition in the larger struggle to reverse public and

Congressional opinion on this issue.30

Yet while this instrumentalist explanation for advocates’ portrayal of DPs as workers is not inaccurate, it is only part of the story. Liberalizers’ insistence on framing

DPs as workers constituted more than a knee-jerk response to those who would seek to close the nation’s borders and more than just a deliberate act of political strategy. This section locates advocates’ vision for DPs in four larger contexts. Together, what emerges is a realization that the decision to treat refugee resettlement as an economic endeavor was rooted in much deeper cultural and political contexts, not simply in the political machinations of a discrete group of individuals.

First, these depictions emerged in the context of a deeply rooted national political culture in which immigrants’ fitness for citizenship and deservedness of belonging were seen as directly correlated to their laboring capacities and to the extent to which their presence benefited the United States. The long-standing ban against persons “likely to become a public charge” is only one example of this economically inflected calculus of

29 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 114-115, 137-138; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 12.

30 Executive Meeting Notes, file 5, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

151 immigrant desirability. Similarly, the idea that immigration policy itself should serve the nation’s economic interests was also fully entrenched by the mid-twentieth century. This notion was embedded in the legal theories that justified immigration regulation, namely the doctrine of plenary power, which Congress interpreted to mean that it’s right to control the nation’s borders and to do so in the national interest, economic or otherwise, was absolute and a foundational tenant of sovereignty itself. It was also established by a long history of explicit and implicit laws and on-the-ground practices, ranging from the exclusion of Chinese laborers to immigrant public health policies and Americanization programs to World War II guest worker programs and long-standing exemptions for certain groups of workers as a result of lobbying by business groups, among numerous other examples. In this sense, the decision to portray DPs as workers and resettlement as an economic project was not just a necessary move within this immediate post-war political context, but it was tied up in larger assumptions about the proper place of the foreign-born in U.S. society, about the types of attributes possessed by potential citizen subjects, and about the ethical acceptability of sculpting immigration policy according to economic interests. In other words, advocates’ decision to frame DP admissions as such was both a deliberate decision, as well as merely “common sense”—not so much a strategy, but a given.31 Tellingly, this decision was made with very little dissent or even discussion.

Second, the construction of DPs as workers emerged in the context of a broader political moment in which it was normative to frame refugee admissions as a strategic economic move. In other words, this framing was not particularly abnormal, but

31 Executive Meeting Notes, file 5, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

152 resonated with broader state-sanctioned patterns in pro-admissions discourse. A commonly repeated and influential economic argument for admitting refugees was that doing so would benefit the United States by eliminating the need for massive expenditures on maintaining DP camps in the Europe. This claim was pushed forward by

State Department and military officials, especially Major John Hilldring, the Assistant

Secretary of State for the Occupied Areas, and it was picked up by the broad spectrum of individuals and groups that spoke out in favor of DP admissions. “So long as that situation remains,” wrote a Detroit resident to the Detroit News, “they are heavy drain on our resources.” An editorialist for The Christian Century echoed this argument: “It is foolish as well as inhumane to keep these people in camps, where they are a charge on the national treasury, one day longer than in necessary.”32 Harold Groves, a University of

Wisconsin economist and member of the Madison Displaced Persons Commission, emphasized that the chance to eliminate the $130 million spent annually on U.S.- administered DP camps was, in his expert opinion, perhaps an even more persuasive economic rationale for passing the Stratton Bill. “We may as well give them an opportunity to earn their keep,” he concluded. On a radio program aiming to convince union members to support this measure, AFL spokesperson Robert Watts explained that admitting refugees was a good policy move from “a purely business point of view,” not

32 For “heavy drain on our resources,” Detroit News, editorial, Feb 19, 1947; for “foolish as well as inhumane,” The Christian Century, editorial, April 23, 1947. For other examples, 94 Cong. Rec. 6402 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 7731 (1948); Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 174 (1947) (testimony of Charles Rozmarek, President of the Polish American Congress). For secondary sources, Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 144; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 17.

153 only because DPs’ skills could be put to use “for the good of our own economy,” but because it would eliminate this financial burden.33

Another more complex economic argument for admitting DPs into the United

States was that failing to do so would hinder Europe’s postwar recovery, which would in turn hinder the American quest for political and economic hegemony. The State

Department and White House regularly warned Americans that the presence of a permanent class of uprooted persons in Europe would function as a sort of contagion, breeding poverty and overpopulation, which according to emerging Cold War social scientific theories, would inevitably lead to the growth of political radicalism and eventually, the spread of Communism and Soviet power throughout the continent. As

George Marshall warned, inaction on the DP question would “have disastrous effects on the larger problem of the reconstitution of Europe that will alone make possible a peaceful world.” “It will become worse and worse,” Stratton added. Picking up on the biological logics that infused Cold War population and modernization theories, he warned that “it will become a cancer over there.” On one hand, admitting DPs into the

United States would function to prevent this outcome because those resettled into the

United States would cease to be a drain on European economies (a logic that relied on a vision of the United States as a sufficiently “young” and sturdy nation that could absorb surplus populations elsewhere and emerge relatively unscathed) and also because doing so was essential if the United States hoped to convince other, more economically-ravaged nations to do the same. As William Bernard later recalled, the fact that a domestic

33 For Groves, Harold Groves, “Settling an Old Debt,” guest editorial, Wisconsin State Journal, May 4, 1947; for Watts, American Federation of Labor, “Should America Open its Doors to Displaced Persons?”, radio forum, America United (NBC, April 6, 1947) Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

154 resettlement act was a diplomatic necessity was widely understood at the time, and as the

Cold War escalated in late-1947 and 1948, this argument gained increasing importance.34

Third, advocates’ notion that DPs could be deployed as a source of cheap labor emerged in the context of established international practices and understandings of the purpose of resettlement. Britain, for example, which began its DP labor program in 1946, first recruited 5,000 Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian women DPs to work in British hospitals and mental institutions. In 1947, after being forced to repatriate German POWs who they used as a source of forced labor for two full years after Germany’s surrender, and in an effort to stymie the labor migration of workers of color from its colonies to the

United Kingdom, Britain instituted a large-scale DP labor program called “Westward

Ho.” By the end of the decade, this program resulted in the migration of almost 200,000

DP workers, mostly men who were assigned jobs as coal miners, steel processors, or farm hands and women (excluding Jews, married women, those with children and others deemed not of “high-quality”) to work as domestic servants or textile workers. France,

Australia, Canada, Belgium, Austria and other nations that admitted large numbers of

DPs also designed their resettlement programs as labor schemes, generally focusing on non-Jewish DPs who would work as domestic workers, coal miners or manual laborers in other sectors deemed vital to the nation’s post-war economic recovery. Displaced persons—including one dozen Kalmyk men who went to France as seasonal laborers and who quickly dissuaded the other Kalmyks from joining them, due to the poor wages and

34 Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States,” 4; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 16–8; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 186; Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 22–3; Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 306. For Marshall, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 505 (1947) (testimony of George C. Marshall, Secretary of State); for “cancer,” ibid, (testimony of Hon. William Stratton, Representative in Congress from Illinois).

155 living conditions, as well as several dozen Kalmyk men who migrated to Belgium and

Austria—were required to leave their families behind in the DP camps, were afforded limited rights in these host countries, and sometimes lost their right to return to the camps. Indeed, the Kalmyks in Belgium and Australia remained stuck there well into the

1950s.35 Those not resettled were also treated as workers: a large percentage of the approximately six million DPs repatriated to the Soviet Union were used as slave laborers, and DPs remaining in the camps were a significant source of labor in the rebuilding of Germany.36

These resettlement practices were explicitly encouraged by the International

Refugee Organization, which took over the administration of the DP camps in the U.S. and British zones in 1947 from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation

Administration (UNRRA) and in essence functioned as a padrone in this international labor placement scheme. The history of the U.S. role in how the IRO came about and why resettlement, not repatriation, prevailed as the post-war solution to the refugee

35 Cindy Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective,” Labor History 44, no. 1 (2003): 83; Archpriest George Count Grabbe to Knut Halle, May 10, 1951, file 2, box 1, TAM.029, TL/RFWLA; Christiane Harzig, “MacNamara’s DP Domestics: Immigration Policy Makers Negotiate Class, Race, and Gender in the Aftermath of World War II,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 10, no. 1 (2003): 23–48; Holborn, The International Refugee Organization, A Specialized Agency of the United Nations; Diana Kay and Robert Miles, “Refugees or Migrant Workers? The Case of the European Volunteer Workers in Britain, 1946-1951,” Journal of Refugee Studies 1, no. 3–4 (1988): 213–36; Henry Brian Meggett Murphy, Flight and Resettlement (Paris: UNESCO, 1955), 93–5, 124; Tommie Sj berg, The Powers and the Persecuted: The Refugee Problem and the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), 1938-1947 (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1991), 193–8. On the Kalmyks, Shamba Balinov to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, December 7, 1951, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML and Stepanow to Dimitry Kapatzinsky, December 15, 1950, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

36 Cohen, “Enlarging European Memory,” 96; Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants,” 84; Sj berg, The Powers and the Persecuted, 194; Harry N. Rosenfield to Mr. John W. Gibson, Chairman and Mr. Edward M. O’Connor, “CONFIDENTIAL: For Commission Consideration, Legislative Program Conferences with High Commissioner McCloy, Ambassador Donnelly and Lt. Gen. LeRoy Irwin, C.G., USFA”, n.d., 2, Legislation – Misc. (1), Subject File, Records of the General Counsel, Records of the Legal Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

156 problem sheds light on a forth key context to liberalizers’ vision of refugee resettlement as an economic project: domestic refugee resettlement was only one component of

American foreign policymaking around DPs, and this broader field of policy was an economic endeavor in a much larger sense. Specifically, it was a product of the U.S. quest for global hegemony during this post-War War II/early Cold War moment.

As established at the 1945 Yalta Conference, displaced persons, with the exception of Jewish survivors, were to be repatriated to their home countries, not resettled elsewhere. The U.S. occupying forces in Germany, Italy and Austria initially complied with this agreement, and in the first year and a half after the war, over six million persons were repatriated (sometimes forcibly) from the American zone to the

Soviet Union and elsewhere. In late 1946 through 1947 as tensions escalated with the

Soviet Union, U.S. officials gradually stopped facilitating DPs’ repatriation and the

Truman administration led a global fight to replace the repatriation-oriented UNRRA with the resettlement-oriented and largely U.S.-controlled IRO. The U.S. believed that the UNRRA was blatantly pro-Soviet, as was the entire project of repatriating DPs. In

Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s words, repatriation constituted little more than a direct funneling of funding (in the form of financial assistance to facilitate DPs’ reintegration) and laborers (in the form of DPs) into “countries bitterly hostile to the United States.” In leading the fight to supplant the UNRRA with the IRO, “the Truman administration converted the refugee issue into an aspect of the emerging Cold War,” explain political scientists Gil Loescher and John Scanlan. Resettling, rather than repatriating Soviet DPs deprived the Soviet Union of funding and laborers, and it meant that DPs could be directed toward the rebuilding of Western Europe (for example, the DP labor schemes in

157

Britain, France, Belgium and elsewhere). Additionally, it was a means of publicizing

Soviet abuses of repatriates, of constructing life in the Soviet Union as akin to slavery, and in the words of Representative John Fogarty, of “showing to all the world that we are in truth champions of freedom and that we shall aid all those who rally to our cause.”

Finally, resettlement (or at the very least, refusing to forcibly repatriate Soviet DPs) was a means of cultivating an anti-communist Soviet exile community which, if U.S. intelligence officers had their way, would lead to the eventual liberation of Eastern

Europe.37

Advocates’ configuration of refugee resettlement as a labor migration emerged within key international, ideological and geopolitical contexts. Yet the story of how the figure of the DP as a worker functioned is more complex still. To get to these complexities, we must first examine the specific occupations that advocates’ envisioned for DPs, and it is to this task that the remainder of the chapter turns.

DP Farmers, DP Domestics

When Earl Harrison, a law professor, former-INS commissioner and the author of the “Harrison Report,” the 1945 report to Truman on DP camps in U.S.-occupied

Germany that helped prompt the administration’s transition to a more proactive approach to the DP problem in late-1945, testified before the House Subcommittee, he assured them that that if admitted, the preponderance of DPs would settle in rural areas. Once there, he explained, the majority would work as manual laborers, often as farm hands,

37 Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 22–3; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 132; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 15–9; Sj berg, The Powers and the Persecuted, 172–98; for “bitterly hostile,” Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969), 201 also quoted in Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 15; for “converted refugee issue into an emerging aspect of the Cold War,” Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 14–5; and for “champions of freedom,” 94 Cong. Rec. 7872 (1948).

158 and in doing so, they would become a “seed population” for the nation’s continued prosperity. He made these predictions with surety, and in the words of political scientists

Gil Loescher and John Scanlan, “with more enthusiasm than accuracy.”38 In addition to his other credentials, Harrison testified in his capacity as the executive director of the

Citizen’s Committee on Displaced Persons, and given this organization’s deep influence on the discursive structures of pro-DP advocacy, it is perhaps unsurprising that

Harrison’s emphasis on DPs as agricultural workers is indicative of broader patterns in this discourse.

Indeed, when refugee advocates spoke of the economic benefits of this migration, they did not speak in general terms. They envisioned that DPs would occupy a very specific economic niche and fill a very specific economic need. During the Congressional hearings and floor debates precipitating the passage of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, as well as in literature produced by volags and letters to editors by Americans, advocates invariably painted DPs as predominantly agricultural workers and to a lesser extent, as domestic workers.39 Accordingly, their resettlement was configured as an importation of farm and domestic workers, and their economic contribution as specifically connected to their employment in these sectors. This section provides examples and details of DPs’ depiction as farm and domestic workers, and it substantiates this revised, and more

38 For “seed population,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. (1947) (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons); for “more enthusiasm than accuracy,” Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 12.

39 When writing about the profession itself, I use the term “domestic worker.” However, at the time, most referred to domestic workers as domestic servants, maids, house help, servant girls or simply as servants. These terms are outmoded and problematic, hence my decision to use “domestic worker.” However, when referring to advocates’ claims, I sometimes use the latter terms in order stay true to the parlance of the time.

159 textured and specific formulation of how refugees were constructed as workers and how resettlement was constructed as a labor placement project.

The examples of advocates’ construction of DPs as farm and domestic workers are numerous. When legislators spoke of DPs as workers, almost without exception, they qualified that not just any workers, DPs were skilled and willing farmhands and domestic servants. Many included detailed demographic breakdowns substantiating these claims, noting that of the DPs in the American zone, “there are 77,000 farmhands among them; some 20,000 are housemaids.” The latter number, advocates emphasized, constituted between 20 and 25 percent of the women in the camps deemed “employable.”40 They argued that there was a shortage of available workers in these sectors and that DPs could fill that void. In the worlds of Representative Ray Madden from Indiana, “In our vast country we have millions of acres of fertile and tillable land how dormant and uncultivated. If HR 2910 is passed … numerous displaced persons can come to our country and settle on small farms, and aid in producing food for the starving world.”41

Leaders of prominent religious volagencies, humanitarian organizations, and government agencies echoed this emphasis. The director of a leading volagency testified that DPs would provide a source of labor for “truck farming and specialized farming, such as sugar beet raising, onion raising, and so forth.” He also emphasized that because many DPs were “servant girls,” they would take jobs in “hospitals [and] large institutions

40 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); for quote, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 302 (1947) (statement of Hon. Arthur G. Klein, Representative in Congress from New York).

41 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 301 (1947) (statement of Hon. Ray J. Madden, Representative in Congress from Indiana).

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… where it is practically impossible now to get help of any kind.” A statement by the

General Federation Clubwoman asked rhetorically, “Do we reject 77,000 willing farm laborers when there is a shortage of farm hands in our country? Do we reject several hundred thousand women when we have a shortage of domestic workers? Our own self- interest would be served by bringing in a goodly number of these people.”42

Individual Americans took up this vision for resettlement en force, and thousands of individuals wrote their Congresspersons, urging them to pass this law for the purpose of admitting more dairy workers, ranch hands, farmers, miners, and maids. Like

Washington policymakers, they claimed that there was a shortage of this sort of labor.

Many also spoke from a more personal perspective. They emphasized their personal stake in the resettlement project and expressed interest in hiring DPs for their own farms, businesses, and homes. Senator William Langer from North Dakota, for example, testified that he alone received hundreds of letters testifying to individuals’ personal interest in hiring a DP maid or farmer.43

Like other Americans, some legislators also hoped this law might afford them a source of household labor. Shortly after Stratton introduced his bill, Representative Noah

Mason pledged his strong support and urged his colleagues to do the same. He did so in part by promoting the bill as a source of domestic and field help, later recounting that during the time the bill was under debate, he and his wife searched far and wide for someone willing to tend to their yard, but unable to find any willing workers, he resorted

42 For hospitals, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 190 (1947) (testimony of Bishop William T. Mulloy, president, National Catholic Rural Life Conference); for “do we reject?”, Statement by the General Federation of Clubwoman, March 1947, reprinted in ibid, 46.

43 94 Cong. Rec. 6800 (1948)

161 to doing it himself. First off the record and later proclaimed unabashedly during the hearings, Mason explained his enthusiasm for the idea of admitting DP farmers: “I have a thousand muscles screaming for one of those refugees to till my garden.” Stratton, too, spoke with an abrupt candor: “I wish I could get one,” he told an interviewer when asked about the large numbers of experienced domestic workers in the DP camps. After the law passed, many Congresspersons did use their clout to fast track their friends’, colleagues’ and constituents’ efforts to recruit DP agricultural and domestic workers directly from

Germany to their personal homes and businesses. But in this case, Mason and Stratton likely spoke at least somewhat facetiously. Stratton, for example, made his comment by way of emphasizing the large demand for domestic workers in the United States after a reporter interrogated him about the nation’s capacity to absorb these new immigrant workers.44

If not articulations of a literal desire to hire DP workers, these comments were nonetheless indicative of advocates’ vision of the direction that resettlement should take.

They were articulations of DPs’ proper place in American society and of how they might fit into the American scene upon arrival. Policymakers’ vision of the purpose of this endeavor (“to till my garden,” in Mason’s words), as well as their vision of what resettlement agencies should do (“put them out on farms in Kansas, Nebraska and so forth,” in the words of another) exposes that refugee admissions and resettlement—in the minds of the very persons who crafted and advocated for the law—centered around the

44 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 80 (1947) (testimony of Hon. Noah M. Mason, Representative in Congress from Illinois); for Stratton, American Federation of Labor, “Should America Open its Doors to Displaced Persons?”, radio forum, America United (NBC, April 6, 1947) Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

162 idea that DPs were workers whose value as migrants was correlated to their laboring capacities and their expected enlistment in these specific economic sectors.45

Agricultural and Domestic Labor at Mid-Century

By the time that policymakers began debating the entry of refugees and their resettlement as farm or domestic workers, these sectors had both been characterized by racialized and gendered systems of exploitation for centuries. Further, during and after

World War II, most Americans experienced a rapid increase in real wages, yet farm and domestic workers’ real wages steadily declined. In order to deepen our understanding of what it meant that advocates promoted DPs’ placement in these sectors, we turn our attention to the economic and social status of these occupations at mid-century. We begin with the agricultural sector and with two recent changes that helped to solidify its status as a marginalized low-wage profession in which workers faced poor working conditions and few legal protections: farmworkers’ exclusion from New Deal protections and the advent of wartime and post-war agricultural labor programs.

According to historians of mid-century American labor relations, one of the most important factors solidifying the agricultural sector’s marginality was the fact that during the 1930s, farmworkers were excluded from the legal definition of a “worker” and thus from New Deal social and labor protections, including the Wagner Act, the Social

Security Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. These exclusions limited farmworkers’ capacity to organize and gave them little recourse in the face of exploitation and abuse, despite the fact that such exploitation was commonplace, especially for immigrants and

45 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 376 (1947) (testimony of Lt Col. Jerry M. Sage, United States Army).

163 people of color. As a result, employers gained free reign over their workforce, and agricultural economist Philip Martin explains that by the end of the World War II,

“getting ahead in the U.S. labor market would require getting out of the farm workforce.”46

The reality that Martin describes was not singularly produced by farmworkers’ lack of legal protections. The low pay and poor working conditions engendered by these exclusions were exacerbated by the advent of several federal labor programs during the war. Pushed forward by the farm lobby and justified by the exaggerated notion that there was a critical shortage of farm laborers in the United States, the federal government authorized and oversaw a number of guest worker programs, including the guest workers program with Mexico and the British West Indies. Respectively referred to as Braceros and H-2 workers, these individuals lacked legal standing in U.S. society, they were banned from protesting the conditions of their labor, and they were thus compelled to accept the wages and treatment afforded to them lest be subject to immediate deportation.

By law, wages were to be set according to the “prevailing wage,” but in practice, there was a consistent state-sanctioned and farm lobby controlled practice of setting wages far below the average for American workers. Moreover, many employers blatantly disregarded even these minimum rates.47

46 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 136; for quote, Philip Martin, Economic Integration and Migration: The Mexico-US Case (United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2003), 10.

47 For Braceros, Calavita, Inside the State; Manuel Garcia y Griego, “The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942-1964,” in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David Gregory Gutiérrez (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 45–85; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 137– 47. For the H-2 program, Fitzroy Andre Baptiste, “Amy Ashwood Garvey and Afro-West Indian Labor in the United States Emergency Farm and War Industries’ Programs of World War II, 1943-1945,” Irinkerindo: A Journal of African Migration 2 (2003), http://www.africamigration.com/archive_02.html; Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State”; Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor;

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While Mexican and Caribbean workers were allotted to large producers, the U.S. government, through the War Manpower Commission, also contracted nearly 450,000

German POWs to small and mid-sized farms and business. Housed in CCC camps across the nation, POWs worked in railroads, foundries, pit mining, flood control, snow removal, construction and every aspect of agriculture and food production.48 Employers of temporary workers and POWs alike became accustomed to this source of cheap, easily managed labor, and in the words of one Florida grower, “we’ve got leverage [with foreign contract labor] that we don’t have over American workers.”49

The creation of these foreign agricultural labor programs coincided with the forced conscription of U.S.-born people of color and other marginalized groups into farm labor during the war. Japanese Americans on the West Coast, for example, were robbed of their assets and businesses, many of which were in farm production, forced into internment camps, and made to work in unskilled stoop-labor positions. The selective service in Texas threatened to draft all Mexican Americans who refused to pick cotton for less than a dollar a day, and in response to the massive outmigration of African

Americans from the rural South, white officials in Cotton Belt communities instituted

“work-or-fight” ordinances requiring African Americans to continue working as sharecroppers.50 The Works Progress Administration regularly forced indigent people off

H. Michael Semler, “Aliens in the Orchard: The Admission of Foreign Contract Laborers for Temporary Work in U. S. Agriculture,” Yale Law & Policy Review 1, no. 2 (April 1, 1983): 187–239.

48 Barbara Schmitter Heisler, “The ‘Other Braceros’”, 24.

49 Ibid, 240; for quote, Hahamovitch, “‘In America Life is Given Away’”, 159.

50 Charles D. Chamberlain, Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South During World War II (University of Georgia Press, 2003), 80–1; Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants”; R. Douglas Hurt, The Great Plains during World War II (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 218; Martin, Economic Integration and Migration, 10.

165 its rolls if they refused to accept farm placements, and state and local prisoners were also enlisted for such work.51 These workers were joined by millions of voluntary conscripts, including school children, city dwellers, women, and workers from other regions, and persons from Puerto Rico and other U.S. colonies who were recruited for wartime farm labor programs.52 By the second year of the war, these initiatives had already led to the placement of over three million workers on farms across the United States.

Together this morass of programs marked a watershed in federal labor management, and they left an indelible impact on the material conditions of farm labor in the United States. The semi-colonial use of foreign contract laborers and other workers with marginal legal standing in U.S. society and restricted physical and social mobility led to a major decline in farm wages relative to other fields: It stymied the farm unionization movements that were finally gaining ground during the years before the war, and it led to a major consolidation of agricultural capital.53 These programs also facilitated the outmigration of over one million U.S.-born white farmworkers to other sectors. While many were drafted into military service, were lured to cities by the prospect of higher-wage industrial and defense jobs, or left these fields due to technological changes in agricultural production, these demographic shifts were directly connected to the advent of these various wartime agricultural labor programs. And as

51 Flynn, The Mess in Washington, 56; Hurt, The Great Plains during World War II, 194.

52 By 1943, nearly 800,000 women worked as farm laborers as a part of the War Food Administration’s Women’s Land Army. The United State Crops Corps Victory Volunteers program enlisted school children to work on farms, leading to a shortened school day for rural youth and volunteer summer programs for city children, mostly boys. Operation Bootstrap facilitated the migration of Puerto Ricans to work in the continental U.S. during WWII. The U.S. Employment Service (USES) and U.S. Extension Agency urged urbanites to accept farm work, and they recruited laborers on a seasonal basis according to need. Flynn, The Mess in Washington, 133, 140.

53 Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State,” 136, 141; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 139.

166 historians concur, these programs were deliberately designed to bring about these shifts.

In the words of Bracero historian Gilbert Gonzales, their purpose was “to replace rather than shore up the existing agricultural labor supply.” In doing so, they quite intentionally led to the persistence of farmworker poverty and exploitation.54

Like agricultural labor, domestic work was marginalized as a low-wage, unregulated sector that was relegated to immigrants and people of color and in which workers were denied New Deal protections and were often subject to abuse. This sector, too, had its origins in slavery and in centuries of exploitation of immigrants and people of color. Despite at least one attempt, there was no equivalent federally-sponsored guest worker program for domestic workers. Yet at mid-century, the practice of funneling immigrant women and women of color into low wage domestic work was not only deep seated, but often directly sanctioned and facilitated by government agencies.55 For example, during the war, municipalities in the South and Southwest created “work-or- jail” ordinances directed at African American, Mexican and Native American domestic workers, and with the goal, as historian Charles Chamberlain explains, of “ensur[ing] a surplus of domestic labor for white women.”56 The U.S. migration program with Puerto

Rico disproportionately targeted Puerto Rican women, rather than single men or families, and it encouraged their dispersal throughout the United States as nannies, maids, and

54 Briggs, Mass Immigration and the National Interest, 99; Flynn, The Mess in Washington; Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State,” 137; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 169; Ngai, Impossible Subjects; for quote, Gilbert G Gonzalez, Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 37.

55 Chang, Disposable Domestics, 99–101; Garcıa, “Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant, 1880- 1930,” 24–5.

56 Chamberlain, Victory at Home, 80–81.

167 caregivers.57 And across the board, state employment bureaus were used for the hiring and distribution of domestic laborers, the majority of whom were immigrants and people of color.58

Dominant white American ideologies papered over women’s exploitation with racist, sexist and paternalistic justifications. Many, for example, argued that domestic work facilitated the uplift of immigrant women through their exposure to Anglo values, and that employing immigrant women as maids and nannies led to the Americanization of immigrant communities because women domestic workers would model within their own households what they would learn from their employers. Despite its paternalistic veneer, the practice of employing women of color and immigrant women as domestic workers functioned to “capture their low-wage or unpaid labors as worker-machines without human needs or rights,” explains Grace Chang in Disposable Domestics.59 For example, in rural areas women agricultural workers often served as a reserve supply of domestic labor, and women domestic workers served as a reserve supply of agricultural workers. As a result, there was a constant surplus of workers in both fields, which in turn kept wages low in both industries.60 The exploitation of domestic workers was further exacerbated by exclusion of women, especially women of color, from other economic sectors, and this, too, functioned to maintain the surplus of domestic workers and to depress wages.

57 Gina M Pérez, The Near Northwest Side Story: Migration, Displacement, and Puerto Rican Families (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

58 Garcia, “Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant, 1880-1930,” 24–5.

59 Chang, Disposable Domestics, 101.

60 Ibid, 99-101.

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Just as for farmworkers, the conditions faced by domestic workers varied greatly by race, class, geography, citizenship status, and other factors. For most, this occupation very rarely functioned as a gateway into a better paying job. Rather, it was a sector in which social and geographic mobility was limited, working conditions were poor, and exploitation was commonplace. Philip Martin’s statement is just as accurate when applied to this profession: by the mid-twentieth century, getting ahead in the U.S. labor market required getting out of the domestic labor workforce.

Conclusion: Intentional Exploitation

In suggesting that refugees should be made to work in agricultural and domestic jobs, refugee advocates intentionally and deliberately framed resettlement as an endeavor in which refugees should be treated as a source of cheap labor. They did not attempt to obscure the nature of these economic sectors; instead, even refugees’ most ardent supporters emphasized and even trumpeted the fact that refugees would be put to work under such poor conditions. Representative Adolf Sabath, for example, who was a staunch New Deal Democratic, a long-time advocate for immigration reform, and a strong supporter of DP admissions, publicly extolled the fact that domestic work and farm labor were two of the nation’s “hardest most undesirable jobs.” In Sabath’s view, the fact that refugees would be subject to objectionable working conditions was a positive development. The overwhelming majority of liberalizers—not just Congresspersons, but

CCDP strategists, State Department and Truman administration advocates, and everyday

Americans—concurred, and they broadcast this message widely.61

61 94 Cong. Rec. 7729 (1948).

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Why did refugee advocates support DPs’ exploitation? The following chapter takes up this vexing historical question in its exploration of how the specter of the DP as a farmer or domestic worker functioned in the debates over DP admissions. For here, the primary task was to demonstrate the deep social and political consensus that the task of admitting and resettling refugees should be approached not simply as an endeavor that should benefit the nation by putting refugees to work, but by exploiting their legal and social vulnerability and placing them in harsh working conditions. As configured by the very persons who worked so hard to bring about this admissions act, refugee resettlement was an explicitly and intentionally exploitative project.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Maids and Farmhands: The Construction of Refugee Resettlement as an Endeavor

to Force DPs’ Assimilation, Exploit their Labor, and Exclude Jews

What did refugee advocates mean to say when they so ardently and repeatedly emphasized that displaced persons would be put to work as farmworkers and domestic servants? More than just a vision for refugees’ economic futures, these articulations took on a complex and interconnected set of meanings and purposes during the debates over

DP admissions. This chapter endeavors to paint a nuanced picture of these meanings and purposes and over the course of this analysis, to show the myriad stakes and implications of this framing.

One of the most striking attributes of advocates’ promotion of farm and domestic labor placements is the extent to which this emphasis enabled them to mollify a broad range of seemingly divergent restrictionist claims and to do so all at once. This chapter argues that the farming and domestic labor emphasis emerged at the nexus of multiple aims. To bring this out, each section is organized around a different restrictionist concern.

The first explores an argument made by two important yet very different segments of the

171 American political scene: organized labor and right-wing nationalist organizations.1

While these powerful contingencies sat at opposite of the political spectrum, both were traditional opponents of immigration reform and both worried that DP workers would exacerbate domestic unemployment rates, and that they would take jobs from white American workers. Advocates’ capacity to deflate these claims was reliant on the construction of resettlement as a farm and domestic labor program, and in fleshing out the contours of this response, I make the case that it was precisely these sectors’ racialization, marginalization and exploitativeness that accounted for advocates’ decision to promote them. Further, in mapping the impacts of this decision, this section suggests that advocates’ willingness to frame resettlement as such was integral to the success of the CCDP’s publicity campaign and by extension, to the passage of the immigration act itself.

The political logics and negotiations surrounding this concern about DPs’ impact on white workers point to a broader theme in the policy debates preceding the passage of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. Liberalizers and restrictionists alike operated as if the rightful and intended beneficiaries of U.S. refugee policy were white Americans, rather than refugees themselves. This chapter’s second section, which focuses on advocates’ responses to outcry about DPs’ impact on the housing crisis, reinforces this point. Like their response to concerns about unemployment, the viability of advocates’ response to this claim was also dependent on the construction of resettlement as a jobs program for the farming and domestic labor sectors. As such, taken together, these two sections bring

1 For our purposes, right-wing nationalist organizations is broadly defined to include mainline veterans organizations, such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as well as more fringe nativist groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution.

172 out a crucial way that the agriculture and domestic labor focus functioned in these debates: as a tidy solution. It offered both a means preventing these politically untenable outcomes, as well as a means of diffusing alarmist rhetoric.

This chapter’s third and fourth sections are organized around the restrictionist claim that DPs would inevitably gravitate to the nation’s largest cities, especially New

York City. Focusing on this claim offers an instructive lens into two deeper, more insidious and more damning concerns: that DPs would form viable ethnic communities in the United States and that the majority would be Jews. Discussions about DP domestics did not figure prominently in these conversations about assimilation and race. The specter of the DP farmer, on the other hand, was at the center of these debates. In both cases, policy conversations about farmers and farm placements served as a proxy to discuss these more controversial concerns, which while widespread, were frequently spoken of in euphemistic, obfuscated ways during this post-Holocaust, early-Cold War moment. In respect to the former concern, the mere invocation of the idea that refugees would be settled on farms came to function as shorthand to communicate advocates’ commitment to turning refugee resettlement into a carefully controlled experiment in social engineering: an endeavor in which the ultimate goal, according to liberalizers and restrictionists alike, was to force DPs’ assimilation. And in respect to the latter issue, advocates’ undue emphasis on DPs as farmers was frequently deployed in a manner to communicate that like opponents of DP admissions, they too preferred non-Jews.

Together, these two sections complicate our understanding of resettlement’s construction as a labor migration. More than just an economic formation, the emerging figure of the refugee as a farm laborer was, at its very origins, tied up in the way that

173 refugee resettlement was a carefully controlled racial—and indeed, anti-Semitic—project, and simultaneously, in its construction as a state-surveilled endeavor to impede the formation of ethnic communities and to force DPs’ “proper” assimilation into white

America. One of the core interventions of this chapter is to suggest that there are crucial connections between these intentions and the specific way that advocates proposed to turn DPs into workers. In doing so, it demonstrates the central and wide-reaching importance of the figure of the DP worker, and it brings together the ample scholarship on the role of anti-Semitism in the DP debates with this dissertation’s focus on resettlement’s economic imperatives, while also opening up a field of study about resettlement as a technology of immigrant social control.2

This chapter’s fifth and final section shifts our focus from policy discourse to advocates’ on-the-ground efforts to win the support of restrictionist groups. A close look at the AJC and CCDP’s joint campaign toward the American Legion provides a case study of how this agricultural and domestic service emphasis functioned behind the scenes. More than a mere tool of public retort, advocates believed that this emphasis might play a role in chipping away at the American Legion’s opposition, and the story of this organization’s eventual reversal sheds light on the relative weight and sincerity of restrictionists’ various concerns.

2 The definitive text on anti-Semitism and the Displaced Persons Act is Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust. See also Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 17–18, 23; Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 98–112; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 5, 8, 9, 13–14, 20–21; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims.” The issue of resettlement as a technology of refugee social control has received little attention in historical scholarship on post-World War II European displaced persons or on other refugee migrations. Key exceptions which explore other migrations include Sara L. McKinnon, “Unsettling Resettlement”, 397–414; Aihwa Ong, Buddha Is Hiding; Eric Tang, “Unsettled: On the Postcolonial Presence of Southeast Asian Refugees”.

174

In the process of making sense of the farm and domestic emphasis’s meanings and purposes, this chapter provides insight into a number of additional issues. Taking up

Bernard Maegi’s notion that policy conversations about jobs played a role in DPs’ racial formation, the section on anti-Semitism investigates how DP whiteness was constituted comparatively with workers of color, tweaking Maegi’s overall assessment of what he refers to as their “peculiar whiteness.”3 This chapter also brings out how the figure of the

DP was gendered and heteronormativized; it demonstrates the importance of guest worker programs in contributing to the material and ideological contexts that enabled the figure of the DP farmer to take on such complex meanings; and it makes clear that these formulations transpired in a larger Cold War context, as the entry of these low-wage workers, especially the farmers, was framed as critical to the United States quest for global hegemony and was seen as necessary to prevent economic, social and political stagnation. Finally, it shows how this political compromise, despite how ingenious it may have been from the perspective of those wanting to mitigate the widespread public disapproval of DP admissions, was forged at the expense of refugees’ well-being.

While this chapter focuses on the figure of the DP farmer and domestic worker in advocate discourse during the first year and half of the AJC and CCDP’s campaign, the motivation for the focus on these sectors has as much to do with what happened after this phase of the campaign. During the 1948 Congressional session, restrictionist policymakers grabbed a hold of the deep multifunctional utility of preferentially selecting

DP farmers and of sending all refugees to the farm and domestic labor sectors, and they

3 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 237.

175 codified this emphasis into the law itself.4 In doing so, they attempted to mandate what advocates only professed to want—not only the relegation of DPs into subpar sectors and their dispersal throughout the nation, but most crucially, the exclusion of Jews. The following chapter explains this history and dissects the law itself, but here we turn our attention to this earlier period, both because making sense of the complexity of these meanings provides a framework for understanding the law, and also because during this period, refugee advocates, in their monumental effort to gain the support of a wide swath of organizations and to reverse public opposition to DP admissions, actually helped to lay the groundwork, however unintentionally, for the creation of a law that was so egregiously restrictive and discriminatory that some of the strongest supporters of DP admissions actually advocated for its veto.5

Unemployment and the “American Worker”: Nativist Groups, Organized Labor, and Resettlement’s Rightful Beneficiaries

While restrictionist policymakers and groups often claimed that refugees would refuse to work, they simultaneously put forth another, if seemingly contradictory, jobs- based explanation for their opposition to DP admissions: that refuges would take

Americans’ jobs. In 1947, the unemployment rate continued to hover below four percent, its lowest level since the 1920s except during the war. However, restrictionists like

Merwin Hart of the National Economic Council (NEC), an anti-New Deal right-wing

4 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 163–182.

5 While the AJC and ACJ opposed a veto, believing that a discriminatory law was better than no law at all, there was some internal dissent. Also, as Dinnerstein explains, a majority of other Jewish groups, especially those with a more Zionist orientation, including the American Jewish Congress (not to be confused with the American Jewish Committee) and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, pressed for a veto. Ibid., 180.

176 organization, suggested that the nation was still at an “acute stage” of its postwar economic readjustment, which meant that future employment prospects remained highly uncertain. In this context, according to Hart and the NEC, any increase in the national labor supply, no matter how small relative to the overall population, would constitute a certain threat to “American workers,” by which they meant workers who were white, male, and U.S. born.6 Charles Babcock of the Junior Order of United American

Mechanics, an anti-immigrant patriotic fraternity, reached a similar conclusion. “Our employment situation forbids the introduction of 100,000 displaced people,” he stated during his testimony before Congress.7

Claims about this potential unemployment crisis were bolstered by veterans groups, which regularly suggested that of all American workers, veterans would be the hardest hit. Jeremiah Twomey, a WWII veteran and the chairperson of the American

Legion’s National Americanism Commission’s Subcommittee on Immigration and

Naturalization, testified that “vast numbers [of veterans] have not yet found their places in our postwar economy, and many are still engaged in training programs and in schools and colleges.” In Twomey’s logic, a decision to admit DPs would constitute a decision to force veterans into competition with a large influx of new workers. And not just any new

6 For Hart, “Position Papers Immigration Europe,” n.d., File 37, box 3, Merwin K. Hart Papers, University of Oregon Library, Special Collections and University Archive, Eugene; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 251 (1947) (testimony of Merwin K. Hart, President, National Economic Council). For unemployment statistics, Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 12.

7 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 151 (1947) (statement of Charles E. Babcock, Chairman, National Legislative Committee, National Council, Junior Order [sic] United American Mechanics).

177 workers, but “the very people for whose liberation they made such sacrifices.”8 Maud

Nigh of the National Council of Daughters of America echoed this logic in a letter she wrote to Representative Frank Fellows, which he shared with other members of the

House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration. “We have no room for them,” she wrote. “The jobs in industries are needed for taking care of our veteran soldiers.”9

By placing the revered World War II veteran at the center of the unemployment debate, restrictionists reconfigured this economic question into a moral issue, and to some effect. Representative Frank Chelf impressed to the House Subcommittee that while his heart “genuinely and sincerely bleed[s] for the poor, miserable unfortunates overseas” and while he genuinely tried to keep an open mind to all perspectives, Twomey’s argument (which he repeated verbatim for full effect: “they [veterans] should not be forced into competition with the hundreds of thousands of the very people for whose liberation they made such sacrifices”) drove home to him that admitting DPs would itself be an injustice.10 Subsequent witnesses then reinforced this moral reasoning. “Displaced veterans,” the next person emphasized, had the rightful “first claim on America’s conscious.” To admit DPs would be to abandon these “displaced Americans.”11

The idea that refugee resettlement would serve as a jobs program for the agricultural and domestic labor sectors was the centerpiece of advocates’ response to this

8 Ibid, 322 (statement of Jeremiah J. Towmey, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the National Americanization Committee, American Legion).

9 Ibid, 117 (Maud V. Nigh to Hon. Frank Fellows and Members of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization).

10 Ibid, 325.

11 Ibid, 330 (statement of James F. Green, Chairman of the National Americanization Committee, American Legion); Ibid, 322 (statement of Jeremiah J. Twomey, Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, National Americanism Commission, American Legion).

178 potent set of claims, a response that sheds a clarifying light on advocates’ willful embrace of these exploitative sectors. As Attorney General Tom Clark noted—and promoted— during his Congressional testimony, agricultural and domestic work “are not within the competitive field of employment.” By this, he meant that DPs’ placement in these fields would not impact American jobseekers because these were jobs, as one Congressperson explained more straightforwardly, that “the American wage earner is not desirous of occupying.” As the Assistant Secretary of Labor Philip Hannah explained, the fact that

Americans (presumably, white, U.S.-born Americans) “cannot or will not [work in these sectors] … both for reasons of lower real income and prestige,” made it “an economic fact” that DPs would “not take jobs away from veterans or other Americans.” These policymakers’ logic is clear: farm and domestic labor were ideal occupations because— not despite—their marginalization and exploitativeness.12

While this logic applied as much to domestic work as farming, this latter occupation dominated these discussions. In part, this imbalance is indicative of the fact that restrictionists’ overwhelming concern was for the job prospects of white American men, not women. This emphasis is also indicative of a more generalized gendering of the figure of the DP worker. Not just in conversations about unemployment, but across the board, discussions about DP workers centered more on men than on women. Moreover, even in discussions about DPs that had little to do with them as workers, DPs were generally figured as men. The language used in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The

Displaced Person” provides a vivid example of this gendering. The story concerns an

12 For Clark, Ibid (statement of Acting Attorney General Hon. Tom C. Clark); for “economic fact,” Ibid, 303 (statement of Hon. Arthur G. Klein, Representative in Congress from New York); for Hannah, Ibid, 463, (statement of Assistant Secretary of Labor Hon Philip Hannah); 94 Cong. Rec. 7729 (1948).

179 entire family of Polish displaced persons—a married couple by the names of Mr. and

Mrs. Guizac and their two children Rudolf and Sledgewig. Throughout the story, only

Mr. Guizac is referred to as “the Displaced Person” (and always capitalized). When not referred to by their names, his spouse and children are “the Displaced Persons’ wife” or

“the Displaced Person’s children.” In other words, only the male head-of-household was a displaced person; the others were treated primarily as his subsidiaries.13

Finally, the undue emphasis on farm laborers, rather than domestic workers, is also indicative of the peculiar role that DP women assumed as workers within these policy discussions. While DP advocates emphasized that DP women would not displace

Americans from jobs because they would be funneled into domestic service, they simultaneously talked about DP women, especially married women, as if they were not workers at all. They would labor within their own households as homemakers, not as paid workers in the public sphere. These contradictory scenarios produced identical outcomes: if portrayed as domestic workers or as “nonworkers,” women DPs presented no threat to

Americans’ job prospects.14

Advocates’ argument that refugees’ presence could not possibly harm white

Americans was also predicated on the assumption that the farm and domestic sectors existed in a wholly separate realm from white American workers. To an extent, this notion was rooted in a demographic reality. Owing in large part to the changes wrought by World War II population and labor policies, especially the Bracero, H-2 and POW

13 Flannery O’Connor, “The Displaced Person,” in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1955).

14 American Federation of Labor, “Should America Open its Doors to Displaced Persons?”, radio forum, America United (NBC, April 6, 1947), Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC. For an example that presents both of these contradictory visions at once; AFL Weekly News Service, “Convention Endorses Stratton Bill”, Thursday, October 21, 1947, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

180 programs, the number of white Americans engaged in waged agricultural labor and domestic work had rapidly declined during the war, and white workers continued to flee both sectors during the postwar period. Yet the prevailing sense of these sectors’ separateness also had a strong ideological component. Both domestic work and agricultural work, especially unskilled, wage-based agricultural work, were seen as forms of labor most appropriate for foreign workers or for U.S.-born workers of color, rather than U.S.-born white Americans. And like this sector’s demographic and material changes, the racialization and foreignization of this form of labor in the American cultural imagination was deeply tied to the advent of state-sponsored guest worker programs, as well as centuries of race-based exploitation.

This farms-centered retort was accompanied by a series of attempts to discredit restrictionists’ underlying economic logics and to suggest that DP admissions would not only leave American workers unscathed but would actually directly elevate their social and economic status and even help to stabilize the American economy as a whole.

Rejecting restrictionists’ idea that in a market economy each additional worker creates an additional unemployed person, a reasoning known as the “lump of labor fallacy,” advocates argued that immigration leads to the creation of new, better jobs for

Americans.15 In their view, this was the case because immigrants create new markets for goods and services and because their entry into the bottom of the nation’s economic ladder would push other groups up a rung. Additionally, proponents of DP admissions emphasized that DPs were not just new workers, but new consumers, a reframing that

15 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 463 (1947) (statement of Hon. Philip Hannah, Assistant Secretary of Labor); for quote, Ibid, 581-584 (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizen’s Committee on Displaced Persons).

181 carried particular weight in this moment of growing faith in the transformative potential of consumerism. Referencing the Twentieth Century Fund’s glowing 1947 economic report, they dismissed restrictionists’ fears of an impending unemployment crisis, deriding this view as evidence of “unconscious psychoneurosis.” Economic expansion was a near inevitability, advocates claimed, and it could only be stymied if the United

States failed to expand its consumer and population base. According to prevailing post- war population science, this scenario would bring more than economic decline. To the country would also stagnate socially, politically and morally, all of which would have disastrous consequences in the context of the nation’s growing Cold War rivalry with the

Soviet Union. Through this lens, refugee admissions offered a golden opportunity to prevent this doomsday scenario and to further larger economic and foreign policy goals.16

In staking out these alternative economic theories, DP advocates paid particular attention to the critical importance of unskilled agricultural labor to the nation’s economic and political future. Many even went so far to suggest that the strength of the

American economy writ-large depended on the admission of DP farmworkers. Failing to do so, Harrison warned, could be the “the worm in our prosperity which may eventually ruin the apple.”17 The AJC and CCDP arranged for several university economists to

16 William L. Batt to Chamber of Commerce Officials, October 1, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Harold Groves, “Settling an Old Debt,” guest editorial, Wisconsin State Journal, May 4, 1947; Earl G. Harrison to Mr. Ralph L. Johnson, Executive Secretary New Albany, Indiana Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 463 (1947) (statement of Hon. Philip Hannah, Assistant Secretary of Labor); Ibid, 13, 27 (testimony of Hon. William Stratton, Representative in Congress from Illinois) (quote on 13); Ibid, 303 (statement of Hon. Arthur G. Klein, Representative in Congress from New York); Ibid, 384; for “unconscious psychoneurosis,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 13 (1947) (testimony of Hon. William Stratton, Representative in Congress from Illinois).

17 Ibid, 582 (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons).

182 substantiate this claim. These witnesses argued that sustained low-cost agricultural production was crucial to American prosperity because it would insure the stabilization of food prices domestically; because it facilitated U.S. control over international grain markets; because agricultural production was vital to the national defense; and because it was a necessary condition in maintaining U.S. control over the rebuilding of Europe, which was itself a necessary condition in establishing U.S. post-war political and economic dominance. Echoing the misleading yet effective claims made by the farm lobby in its promotion of the Bracero Program, advocates of refugee admissions argued that these aims were in jeopardy due to critical labor shortages.18 Through this logic, DPs would not directly impoverish needy Americans; instead, by taking these undesirable yet vitally important jobs, DPs would form the basis for continued American economic and political power. Thus, when Harrison and others argued that DPs will “mak[e] better jobs for our college trained GIs,” they meant so not simply because new groups enable others take a step up the nation’s metaphorical economic ladder in a tit-for-tat manner, but because this sector stabilized the entire ladder.19

…

18 The national defense argument only grew in significance as the Cold War escalated, and it featured far more centrally in debates over the re-authorization of the Displaced Persons Act in 1950 than in these first debates. Harold Groves, “Settling an Old Debt,” guest editorial, Wisconsin State Journal, May 4, 1947; Bernard Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 170; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 463 (1947) (statement of Hon. Philip Hannah, Assistant Secretary of Labor); ibid, 581-584, (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons); ibid, 303 (statement of Hon. Arthur G. Klein, Representative in Congress from New York); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 82-83, 331-333.

19 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 582 (1947) (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons).

183

These retorts did not appease most veterans’ organizations and nativist groups. In part, this failure was due to the fact that the Stratton Bill did not mandate farm and domestic placements, but instead relied on voluntary agencies’ assurances that they would resettle refugees as such. “Mere promises won’t make … jobs” one restrictionist explained.20 Yet restrictionists’ continued emphasis on unemployment has an additional explanation. As William Bernard later recalled, right wing groups’ consternation about

DPs’ impact on unemployment was “far from sincere.” On the whole, the purpose of this public outcry was to delay action on the Stratton Bill, to plant a seed of fear in the minds of American workers, and to mask the other, more controversial and less socially acceptable reasons for these groups’ opposition.21

In contrast, the capacity for farm and domestic labor placements to eliminate potential job losses for Americans was a critical element of the AFL’s, CIO’s and many smaller unions’ eventual decisions to support DP admissions. In fact, the potential for this plan to sway organized labor in favor of DP admissions was a key reason that AJC planners made the fall 1946 decision to frame the resettlement program as a jobs program for these sectors, and this strategy paid off handsomely. As AFL President William Green explained in his Congressional testimony and in numerous letters to local branches, his union’s late 1946 decision to support DP admissions had been contingent on the fact that

“the working man” would not be harmed by this law. “If we thought that the admission of

400,000 people was going to seriously affect our employment problem, we would not

20 94 Cong. Rec. 6448 (1948).

21 In Bernard’s words, these claims were “scare material.” Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States,” 9, 11.

184 support it.”22 The AFL, Green claimed, had full confidence that DP admissions would have no such impact. This was the case, he explained, because DPs would be dispersed throughout rural areas and funneled into farm work and domestic labor. His logic, in short, was that DPs would exist in a separate economic world from skilled, unionized labor and that because DPs would be ghettoized into these non-competitive sectors and would live in regions far from urban industrial centers, there was little chance that industry could manipulate their presence to depress wages and working conditions or destabilize the power of organized labor.23

In reality, the AFL’s full rationale for supporting DP admissions was more complex than its leadership revealed in official public statements. As political scientists

Daniel Tichenor and Janice Fine explain, the support of the AFL, like the CIO and other major unions, was also contingent on policymakers’ willingness to frame DP admissions as a one-time, stop-gap measure that would leave the national origins quota system fully intact. While most major unions would become strong advocates for wide-scale immigration reform by the mid-1950s, during the first years after World War II they remained staunchly opposed to any loosening of immigration restrictions, and securing union support was a major reason that the AJC and CCDP decided to decouple DP

22 Ibid, 11; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong (1947) (Statement of William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor,” Chairman of the Citizen’s Committee on Displaced Persons); William Green to Earl Harrison, March 7, 1947, file: AFL, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; for sending letters to multiple branches, Zeigler-Meehan, Field Operations to Miss Clark, Field Operations, Washington Office, April 24, 1947, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

23 Ibid, and AFL Weekly News Service, “Convention Endorses Stratton Bill,” Thursday, October 21, 1947, file: AFL, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Labor Press Service, U.S. Department of Labor, “AFL and CIO Reaffirm Support of Liberalized DP Legislation,” news release, February 20, 1950, Government Departments – Department of Labor, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

185 admissions from immigration reform more broadly.24 Organized labor’s uncharacteristic decision to back this measure was also tied up in leaders’ realization that supporting refugee resettlement would reflect positively on their image, especially amongst rank- and-file members of Jewish and Eastern European descent and also more broadly, as supporting DP admissions was an opportunity to demonstrate the labor movement’s opposition to communism, and to fascism, racism and injustice more generally.25 Finally, this support was a product of labor leaders’ confidence that unions had enough political might to withstand any negative impacts resulting from this influx of new workers, it was contingent on their realization that most industries were no longer as needful of unskilled laborers as such, and it was often a result of the astute political machinations of CCDP and AJC fieldworkers. William Green’s support, for example, was secured by New York

Bishop James McIntyre, who approached Green on Engle’s behest, and in exchange for his backing, Green was appointed vice-chairperson of the CCDP, a post that he served more in name than in practice.26 That refugees would be funneled into agricultural and

24 Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States”, 6; “Progress Report, Publicity Department,” September 11-October 3, 1947, file: “Executive Meeting Notes, Sept-Dec, 1947, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Janice Fine and Daniel J. Tichenor, “A Movement Wrestling: American Labor’s Enduring Struggle with Immigration, 1866-2007,” Studies in American Political Development 23, no. 1 (2009): 84– 113; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 183.

25 For examples of how the AFL used its support to project a favorable image of itself, “AFL Resolution 85,” in the Report of Proceedings of the Sixty-Fifth Convention of the American Federation of Labor, (Chicago, Illinois, October, 1946), 294; American Federation of Labor, “Displaced Persons, Resolution 4,” October 15, 1947, box 296, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, “Resolution on Displaced Persons,” June 3, 1947, folder 11, box 296, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

26 Additionally, despite labor organization’s official support of DP admissions, there was often much internal opposition among the leadership as well as the rank and file. For example, Rosenberg to Local Citizens Committees on Displaced Persons, “Teamsters Union Re: Stratton Bill,” February 2, 1948, folder 11, box 296, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC. For McIntyre and the importance of organized labor’s political wherewithal in precipitating this reversal, Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States”; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims;” Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 122; Fine and Tichenor, “A Movement Wrestling;” Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness.

186 domestic labor was only one of several factors culminating in the AFL’s and other unions’ decisions to support DP admissions, but it was, as Green made clear, a necessary condition for that support.

That the agricultural emphasis was a necessary condition for organized labor’s support is extremely important because this support was in turn a necessary condition for the DP Act’s overall success. During the debates over refugee admissions, unions were at the peak of their post-war power and influence, and the CCDP believed—and seemingly accurately so—that without the approval of the nation’s largest unions, the bill stood little chance of passage. Their support for refugee admissions served as a powerful rejoinder to restrictionists who claimed to oppose refugee admissions out of concern for American workers, effectively preventing this claim from garnering wider national recognition.27

Also, by mid-1947, labor specialists hired by the CCDP successfully convinced these groups to wield their political might in support of the Stratton Bill. Tens of thousands of

Americans attended union-sponsored screenings of Passport to Nowhere, a major motion picture commissioned by the CCDP, and hundreds of thousands more received pro- admissions brochures and flyers from their respective unions. More than just an important factor in the broader reversal of public opinion during this period, organized labor also contributed to the transformation in Congressional will.28 Many individual legislators were pushed to action by labor leaders from their districts, and with labor’s

27 For example, J. George Freedman to William Bernard, July 7, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

28 “Minutes of Meeting, Executive Committee, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons,” July 10, 1947, folder 11, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC. Janice Fine and Daniel J. Tichenor, “A Movement Wrestling”, 84–113.

187 support, the prospect that Congress would pass some sort of DP legislation transformed from a pipedream into a probability.

In conclusion, for veterans groups, for organized labor and for the DP advocates who hoped to garner their support, the fact that domestic and agricultural labor were undesirable, low-wage sectors operating outside of the regular economy was precisely why they were seen as the ideal destination for DP workers. Advocates’ willingness to frame resettlement as an intentionally exploitative endeavor was integral to the success of the CCDP’s publicity campaign and to the eventual passage of a DP admissions act.

Further, because this vision for resettlement was framed according to white Americans’ interests (and because their interests were to banish refugees to subpar sectors), the picture that emerges is one in which the proposed system was explicitly designed with white Americans—not refugees—as the rightful and intended beneficiaries of refugee admissions.

The Housing Crisis: American Interests and Refugee Well-Being

Restrictionist claims about DPs and unemployment were often coupled with another argument: that they would exacerbate existing housing shortages. During the depression and World War II, the construction of new homes had grounded to a halt, which led to a severe housing shortage when veterans returned after the war and when millions of Americans left shared or multigenerational family homes to pursue the nascent cultural fantasy of nuclear family bliss in which homeownership figured largely.29 Combined with the looming threat of unemployment, the housing crisis, said influential nativist John Trevor, “threat[ened] … the existence of every working man and

29 Ashley Miller, “Post WWII Housing Crisis,” in Fast and Affordable: A Century of Prefab Housing, http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/prefabhousing/prefab.php?content=seven.

188 woman.” It was “much more of an emergency” than the problem of displaced persons in

Europe.30 Again, DPs were directly set against American veterans within this moral calculus, and restrictionists suggested that deserving veterans would be the group most directly affected by the inevitable heightening of the crisis when refugees attempted to obtain housing. In the words of ranking American Legion official James Green, “no increase in immigration can be tolerated until a solution for this problem is in sight.”31

Refugee advocates had a number of retorts for these claims: that the impact would be minimal because DPs would not come all at once; that the housing situation would improve (and immigrants’ manual labor might actually facilitate that); that many DP families would move in with relatives; that no American landlord would prefer an immigrant over a veteran; and that welfare agencies would step in as providers for those deemed unable to live independently.32 But by far, the most pervasive response was that channeling DPs into farm work would prevent DPs from displacing Americans from

30 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 22-3. John Trevor was the president of the nativist umbrella group the American Coalition of Patriotic societies and had been a key architect 1924 Immigration Act. While the American Coalition of Patriotic societies had previously been indicted for pro-Nazi activities, Trevor remained one of most influential Congressional lobbyists during the post-war years. Heidi Beirich, “John Tanton and the Nativist Movement,” in The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of the Nativist Movement, a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, February, 2009, http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/publications/the-nativist-lobby-three-faces-of-intolerance; “John B. Trevor,” in Multilingual Archive, http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/John_B._Trevor_Sr.#cite_note-trevor-3.

31 J. George Freedman to William Bernard, July 7, 1947, folder 16, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 245, 250-1 (Statement of Merwin K. Hart, President of the National Economic Council); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 15; for quote, James Green, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 330 (Statement of James F. Green, Chairman, National Americanization commission of the American Legion).

32 For a representative statement, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 585-6 (1947) (statement of Earl G. Harrison, Chairman of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons); for the argument about those who cannot live independently, Ibid, 305 (statement of the Honorable Adolf J. Sabath).

189 housing. Displaced persons “won’t take urgent housing from anyone,” in the words of a

CCDP editorial sent to newspapers around the country, because “housing is available on farms for agricultural workers.”33 Gendered, heteronormative logics underlay this tidy explanation, as it relied on a vision of the DP migration as a mass migration of male head-of-household breadwinners with an optional nuclear family in tow. The assumption, which was so well agreed upon that it was often left unspoken, was that married women would live in the housing provided for their farmworker husbands and that unmarried women would become live-in maids.

The type of housing envisioned for these DP farmers (and farmers’ wives and children) was varied but revealing. Advocates’ stated intention was to place refugees in so-called “non-competitive housing,” by which they meant housing that most Americans would not want. Specifically, they suggested that refugees could live in rural homes abandoned by Americans during the massive outmigration to urban areas; in the shacks and crude housing provided for sharecroppers; in barracks for migrant workers and other farmworkers; and even on army bases and in camps that had been constructed for POWs.

Not simply public rhetoric, agencies affiliated with the CCDP, acting on direct instructions from Executive Secretary Bernard, canvassed the nation in search of “non- competitive housing facilities that might be made available to displaced persons.”34 The

33 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, “VE-Day Editorial Suggested by the Citizen’s Committee on Displaced Persons: ‘Send these, The Homeless, Tempest-Tossed to Me!’”, form letter, May 8, 1947, William G. Stratton Files, Historical Society of Illinois, reprinted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 128-129; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 13 (1947); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 15.

34 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States”, 11; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 202 (1947) (statement from the National

190 underlying logic is familiar. Non-competitive housing was prioritized because, not despite, the fact that it was subpar. And again, white Americans’ interests were prioritized to the detriment of refugees’ well-being.

Immigrants in Cities: Farm Placements as Social Engineering

In addition to the housing and unemployment arguments, restrictionists regularly warned Americans that refugees would inevitably congregate in the nation’s largest cities, especially New York City. Opponents of refugee admissions generally voiced this concern as if the danger inherent in this prospect were self-evident. To be sure, most

Americans would have been immediately aware of the deeper messages that lurked beneath its surface. In urban areas, restrictionist meant to say, these Eastern European immigrants would be prone to forming “closed colonies” where they would maintain their native languages, values, and political alliances, while refusing to “become part and parcel of America.” Unabashed nativist Alexander Wiley outlined this meaning directly.

Immigrants in cities, he explained, “form a whirlpool of foreignism and create many of our problems.” Admitting DPs would only “add to that whirlpool.” In short, warnings about potential DP settlements in cities amounted to warnings that DPs would form visible ethnic communities instead of fully assimilating themselves into white American life.35

The assumption that refugees would be placed on farms might seem to offer a logical retort to outcry about urban communities: because refugees would be sent to

Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association); for quote, “Minutes of Meeting, Executive Committee, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons,” March 28, 1947, file 5, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

35 For “part and parcel,” 94 Cong. Rec. 6182 (1948) and for Wiley, 94 Cong. Rec. 6447 (1948).

191 farms, very few would live anywhere near New York City or other large urban areas, and because so many DPs were farmers, most would have little interest in moving there at a later date. Advocates did indeed make such claims, but in the largest part, ideas about farming figured into their engagement with restrictionists’ underlying concerns about

DPs’ assimilation in a more entrenched and less tit-for-tat manner.36 Rather than reject nativists’ insistence on an Anglo-conformity model of immigrant life, advocates readily endorsed it, and within these policy discussions, their support for farm placements was treated as a symbol of their commitment to engineering DPs’ assimilation.

Two converging strains of thought supported this symbolic weight of farm placements. First, advocates held up their commitment to funneling refugees into this quintessential rural job as indicative of an even deeper commitment: to send refugees to rural areas and to disperse them widely, regardless of their occupation. Advocates readily stated that bringing about DPs’ full dispersal would be the goal of the proposed resettlement program and that the goal of dispersal would be to prevent the growth of ethnic communities. The intention, in other words, was that dispersal would function to compel refugees’ assimilation (and that the idea of dispersal would dispel restrictionist rhetoric about DPs’ refusal to assimilate). Spread over the country and isolated from their co-ethnics, DPs would have little choice but to shed their European languages and values and to fully absorb themselves into white America, or so proponents claimed. More than public rhetoric, thousands of religious groups, civic organizations and state planning

36 For example, Earl Harrison to Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Emmanuel Cellar, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong (1947).

192 commissions spent this year and a half before the passage of the law laying the plans for refugees’ full dispersal throughout rural America.37

Second, advocates drew on deep seated national mythologies about agriculture as an inherently Americanizing endeavor in order to suggest that farm placements would offer a direct means of compelling refugees’ assimilation. Advocates like American Farm

Bureau President Edward O’Neal sketched out a trajectory in which these immigrants, through their toils and their sheer “love of the land,” would become model Americans and “make a substantial contribution to the American way of life.” Bishop William

Mulloy of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference echoed this logic during his testimony before Congress, and he suggested that agricultural jobs would function as

“apprenticeships” which would introduce European workers not just to American methods of agricultural production, but to American culture and life. DPs might start out as wage laborers, taking jobs similar to those filled by workers of color. But eventually they would become renters and finally the “owners of the land,” and along the way, they would become Americans. In a moniker coined by a CCDP leader that soon gained national currency, DPs farmers were more than “displaced persons.” They were “delayed pilgrims.”38 The fact that the wives of these displaced persons/delayed pilgrims would

37 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 7794 (1948); Ugo Carusi to The Secretary of State, “Outline of Plans to Implement Legislation Which May Be Enacted to Permit the Immigration of Displaced Persons to the United States”, January 16, 1948, Gov. Depts. – State Dept., Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

38 For O’Neal, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 199 (1947) (statement of Mr. O’Neal of the American Farm Bureau Federation); for Mulloy, “Statement of Most Rev. William T. Mulloy, Bishop of Covington, President, National Catholic Rural Life Conference,” folder 11, box 297, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; for “delayed pilgrim,” Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 160; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims.”

193 work in white Americans’ households only reinforced this notion that their

Americanization would be all but inevitable.

Immigrants in Cities: The Racial Significance of the Farm Emphasis

More than just opposition to cultural pluralism, restrictionist rhetoric about cities carried a second connotation. At the time, Dinnerstein explains, “Jews [were] thought of as the archetypal urban dwellers” and as the most averse to assimilation. As Mississippi

Senator and prominent segregationist James Eastland stated outright, those most inclined to settle in cities and to hold on to their “alien philosophies” were those with “biologic incompatibility with America’s parent stocks,” by which he meant Jews. Most restrictionists, however, did not trumpet their racism so boldly, and discourse about the inevitability of DP settlements in cities became a platform for expressing anti-Semitic ideas in an ostensibly race-blind way.39

The ethno-racial connotations embedded in these discussions were widely recognized at the time, and a close reading of this discourse makes this hidden meaning all the more apparent. The prospect that DPs would gravitate to cities was spoken of as an inevitability, as something that stemmed from an embedded racial or cultural trait. Lois

Graham, for example, warned that even if DPs were sent to farms, they would “invariably

… return to congested areas, such as New York,” and he cited a study about Jewish immigrants to make this point.40 The repeated emphasis on New York City, which was well known for its sizable Jewish population, also sufficed to convey this double

39 94 Cong. Rec. 6904 (1948) (statement of Senator Eastland); Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 167.

40 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong (1947).

194 meaning. Additionally, while lawmakers mentioned the “serious social and economic problems” caused by Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and African Americans in order to make sense of this potential threat, the urban communities referenced were predominantly comprised of Jews.41 They mentioned urban settlements by persons who entered the

United States under the Truman Directive, those who overstayed their visas during World

War II, the nearly 1,000 who had been in the Oswego detention center during the war, and European “illegal aliens” who arrived during the late 1930s and early 1940s.42

Finally, the anti-Semitism embedded in this discourse is made clear by the context in which it emerged. As Dinnerstein explains, behind the scenes, lawmakers spoke openly about how the Truman Directive seemed to have disproportionately benefited Jews and about their desire to stymie this flow. “But publicly, however, [they] commented only about the numbers going to urban areas and kept their reservations about the religious breakdowns relatively quiet.”43 In this post-Holocaust moment, such blatant anti-

Semitism was regularly repackaged, if only superficially so.44

Cognizant of the fact that most Americans associated DPs with Jews and that they opposed their migration for precisely this reason, CCDP publications regularly emphasized that Jews comprised only a small fraction of the remaining DP population in

Europe and that the vast majority of those who would migrate to the United States would

41 94 Cong. Rec. 6903 (1948); Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong 113, 114 (1947); for quote, 94 Cong. Rec. 6188 (1948).

42 For illegal aliens, 94 Cong. Rec. 6456-7 (1948); for Truman Directive, 94 Cong. Rec. 6188 (1948).

43 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 164.

44 Howard Winant, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

195 thus be Protestants or Catholics, not Jews. As other groups joined the broad CCDP umbrella, they too invariably emphasized this point in their lobbying efforts. (And of course the very purpose for recruiting such a broad base of support was to disabuse

Americans of the notion that most DPs were Jews.)45 Advocates’ emphasis on DPs as hearty, able farmers—not simply as persons who could be forced into farm work—also functioned to convey this idea. Racial stereotypes pegged Jews as tailors, academics, businesspersons, or perhaps factory workers, but certainly not farmers. In this context, the undue emphasis on the DP as a farmer was an explicit, intentional attempt to convey that the typical DP—and on all accords, the preferred DP—was a non-Jew. In fact, these implicit racial meanings were so well-understood at the time that many historians have assumed that communicating this message was the sole reason that CCDP and AJC activists chose to depict DPs as farmers.46

The racial meaning embedded in the figure of the DP as a farmer extends beyond its implied exclusion of Jewish DPs. The predominant image of the DP farmer centered on the subset of the camp population considered most solidly white by mid-century

American racial logics, namely , Estonians, Latvians, and ethnic Germans from these Baltic nations. As Bernard Maegi explores in his study of American ideas about Baltic DPs, Balts were seen as racially and culturally predisposed to farm work and to rural living in general. Indeed, a large portion of speeches, editorials and letters favoring the admittance of DP farmers mentioned Balts in particular and portrayed them

45 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 117-136; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 66- 113.

46 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 131.

196 as hearty, blue-eyed, blonde-haired farm stock.47 Even Jewish American activists, most of whom believed that a large portion of Balts were Nazi collaborators, publicly claimed to prefer this group.48 While the correlation between “farmer” and “non-Jew” seemed to have been the most crucial element in this racial calculus, on each account, the figure of the DP as a farmer was an inherently racialized construction.

The racial meanings embedded in discussions about DP farmers help to explain the curious ubiquity of policy debates about DPs’ impact on unemployment during this moment of record low jobless rates. A deep anti-Semitism ran through right wing groups’ warnings that DPs would take Americans’ jobs. Their message, if rarely articulated so explicitly, was that DPs would take Americans jobs because DPs were Jews. Advocates’ retort to these claims carried a similar double meaning: DP farmworkers posed no threat to white American men not simply because this occupation was so deeply undesirable, but because DP farmworkers, by definition, were not Jews.

…

Like the construction of the DP as a farmer, the construction of resettlement as a farm project was also deeply racialized. By the time that policymakers began debating

DP admissions, unskilled farm labor, particularly stoop labor, was generally seen as a distinctly non-white form of labor. As such, as Bernard Maegi argues in “Dangerous

Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” advocates’ willingness to offer up European DPs for stoop

47 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims.” For an example of an editorial. “Those from the Baltic countries, in particular are ideally suited to take over as farm hands and other agricultural workers … the DPs need America but no more than America needs the DPs.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, editorial.

48 For an example of the CCDP promotion of Baltic DPs as the most desirable, Earl G. Harrison to R.W. O’Connor, Independence Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; for Jewish advocates’ belief that many Baltic DPs were Nazi sympathizers or collaborators, Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 88-90.

197 agricultural labor was a well-recognized act of racializing DPs as less than fully white.

Yet rather than work alongside people of color, advocates generally suggested that DPs would replace them. In the words of Bishop Mulloy of the National Catholic Rural Life

Conference, European DPs would offer a “much more satisfactory and permanent solution” for agricultural labor shortages. In Maegi’s estimation, they were racialized as

“suitably white replacements for non-white labor,” leading him to conclude that that theirs was a “peculiar whiteness.”49

The peculiarity of their whiteness notwithstanding, several additional attributes of this discourse add layers of complexity to Maegi’s assessment of the racial significance of the idea that DPs would replace guest workers and other workers of color. Many of the advocates who suggested that DPs should be hired as stoop laborers just as frequently suggested that they should fill positions vacated by white Americans who had moved to cities, and on the whole, this latter plan dominated public discourse as well as the behind the scenes planning.50 Also, while many employers did intend to hire them as to work alongside guest workers, at a policy level, agribusiness had no interest in replacing the H-

2 and Bracero Programs with the DP program. From a business perspective, it made little

49 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 171-175, 237; for Mulloy, “Statement of Most Rev. William T. Mulloy, Bishop of Covington, President, National Catholic Rural Life Conference,” folder 11, box 297, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

50 Anna H. Clark, Liaison with Cooperating Organizations to H. Jerry Voorhis of the Cooperative League of the United States, Feb 19, 1948, folder 9, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC, IHRC; Earl G. Harrison to Mr. Ralph L. Johnson, Executive Secretary New Albany, Indiana Chamber of Commerce,” November 3, 1947, folder 32, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “Minutes of Meeting – Executive Committee, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons,” 2, September 11, 1947, folder 11, box 294, IRSA Records, IHRC; “The Facts about the Displaced Persons,” July 24, 1947, page 2, 3, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “Progress Report, Publicity Department,” 2 2, July 17- September 11, folder: Executive Meeting Notes, September-December, 1947, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Vinton Ziegler, Director of Field Operations to Executive Committee on Displaced Persons, July 31, 1947, folder: Executive Meeting Notes, September-December, 1947, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

198 sense to replace contract workers with immigrants whose presence in the United States was not contingent on their willingness to accept poor wages and working conditions. In fact, while farm groups did not oppose DP admissions, they remained largely indifferent to the effort, focusing instead on winning the 1947 Congressional renewal of the Bracero

Program.51 Finally, regardless of DPs’ initial job placement, proponents drew out a very different trajectory for white workers. According to resettlement officials, the goal was

“to keep [them] out of the migratory labor stream,” and unlike H-2 and Bracero workers, the expectation was that DP farmworkers’ engagement with the land would facilitate their

Americanization.52

This starkly different trajectory imagined for DP workers drew on the deeply racialized relationship between agriculture and citizenship in the American cultural imaginary. While agricultural work had long been envisioned as a crucible in which

European immigrants would be transformed into white citizen subjects, for immigrant

51 The American Farm Bureau was reluctant to support DP admissions and seemed to have done so in large part because they believed that this measure would help to stabilize American markets for agricultural exports. Earl Harrison to Mrs. Raymond Sayre, November 28, 1947, folder 17, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Charles Slayman to Dr. William Bernard, December 12, 1947, folder 16, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Clipping, New York Times, December 18, 1947, folder 17, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “Fairfield Report”, Charlotte Abbotte to Helen Shuford, December, 1946, folder 16, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; R.M. Meehan to W.S. Bernard, Memo re: ‘Abbot Report’, April 28, 1947, folder 16, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “Resolutions Adopted at the 28th Annual Convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation,” December 12, 1946, folder 16, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC. The National Farmer Union and other groups representing small farmers rather than agribusinesses were more inclined to support the measure and many did so enthusiastically. Lee Fryer, Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union to Dr. Clara Mayer, June 2, 1947, folder 9, box 294, IRSA Records, IHRC; Anna Clark to Emily Lehan, “National Farmer Union,” June, 1947, folder 9, box 294, IRSA Records, IHRC. For more information about the effort to reach small farmers and the CCDP’s cooperation with local extension agencies and church groups, see folder 9, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC, including Anna Clark to Helen Shuford, February 3, 1948; “Miss Genevieve Judy of Dairymen’s Cooperative Association; “Recent Correspondence with Farm Groups;” Anna H. Clark to Lee J. Margolin; “Farm Film Foundation,” February 18, 1948; “Excerpts from Report by Violet Bemmels to Helen A Shuford,” December 12, 1947.

52 Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 43–4.

199 workers of color, engaging in waged, migratory or “stoop” farm work marked them outside of the sphere of national belonging. This type of farm work was constructed as a separate physical and cultural space that kept racially inassimilable persons at the nation’s metaphorical borders, and Mexican and Mexican American migrant farmers, for example, despite how long they remained in the United States and despite the fact that many were U.S. citizens, were generally seen as foreign elements who might be physically inside the nation, but not of the nation. While advocates’ assumption that farm work would serve as a powerful Americanizing force for DPs underscores the overwhelming extent to which their racial formation drew on contrasts to—rather than comparisons with—workers of color, the racialized construction of agricultural work as a gatekeeping occupation nonetheless played an important role in these debates.53 In promoting DPs’ placement as stoop laborers, advocates communicated that even if even if Jews and other “undesirable elements” were permitted to enter, the overall impact would be minor, and not just because these jobs were already filled by far less savory types and but because these occupations kept dangerous people at the margins of the nation.

Behind the Cloak of Public Rhetoric: The CCDP, the AJC, and the American

Legion

As the preceding sections have demonstrated, the decision to offer up DPs as farmworkers was an astute move that neatly and simultaneously engaged with an impressive range of different restrictionist claims. This section takes a close look at the

AJC and CCDP’s ongoing campaign toward one of the more prominent and influential

53 I thank Sarah Wald for her insights on this point.

200 restrictionist groups, the American Legion. Of the nearly 200 organizations that eventually issued their support for this measure, the American Legion’s fall of 1947 decision to do so was perhaps the most unlikely. The events that led up to that decision shed light on the relative importance of the varied underlying concerns that advocates engaged through their discussions about farmers and domestic workers. Further, this case study helps to move us from the realm of public discourse to behind-the-scenes negotiations, showing how ideas about farming functioned within this well thought out and strategic campaign to win support from even the unlikeliest sources.

By the summer of 1947, the American Legion had yet to issue its official opposition to the Stratton Bill, at least not in the form of a national resolution. The reason was simple: resolutions could only be passed at the annual convention, which was still several months away. But the Bill’s advocates had no delusions about the stance of the

Legion’s leadership. “The top leaders of the American Legion are against the bill,” one

CCDP fieldworker noted unequivocally. The Congressional hearings bore this out fully when not only Twomey and Green, but also Colonel John Thomas Taylor, the head of the

American Legion’s National Legislative Committee, spoke in vociferous opposition to the Stratton Bill and when the organization’s National Commander Paul Griffiths, during that year’s annual DAR convention, issued an even more inflammatory, resounding and in the words of one CCDP strategist, “disastrous” condemnation of the Stratton Bill.54

54 For “disastrous,” Philip Forman to Irving Engle, June 4, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 320-334 (1947); for speech, “Address of National Commander Paul H. Griffith of the American Legion before the 56th Congress of the DAR in Washington, DC,” May 22, 1947, folder 18, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

201

After the hearings’ close, the CCDP intensified its campaign toward this organization, elevating it to the level of a “special project.” The imperative, at least initially, was to simply prevent the passage of a negative resolution at the upcoming conference, or at the very least, to offset its impact and to “keep the convention from

Rabidness,” in the words of an internal memo (their capitalization). Drawing on their own personal connections in the organization and working in conjunction with AJC activists, CCDP fieldworkers organized lists of individual Legionnaires who might be sympathetic to the cause. They invited these individuals to luncheons in upscale locations—the first was at the Princeton Club of New York City—and they pitched their cause.55 By August of 1947 they had enlisted the support of several dozen mid-level

Legionaries, who then lobbied other potentially sympathetic colleagues throughout the nation and attempted to convince individual posts and state conventions to issues resolutions in support of DP admissions. American Legion insiders, some of whom like

Jewish War Veterans leader J. George Freeman regularly provided strategic insights to

CCDP and AJC fieldworkers, believed that these resolutions would be unlikely to sway the national leadership.56 Yet even if they failed to galvanize enough internal opposition to prevent the passage of a negative national resolution, Freeman and others believed that

55 Vinton E Ziegler to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Jacobson and Miss Clark, June 6, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Unsigned letter to J. M. Ross, July 11, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Vinton E Ziegler to William S. Bernard, “Memorandum, Re Informal Luncheon Meeting with Interested Members of the American Legion at the Princeton Club, July 2, 1947,” July 3, 1947; folder 16, box 290, IRSA Records, IHRC; and for “rabidness,” C. Abbot to Miss Clark, July 17, 1947, folder: American Legion—Interoffice Memos, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

56 While the AJC and CCDP collaborated with a number of Legion insiders, J. George Freeman, who was also a leader of the AJC-affiliated Jewish War Veterans and who had gained national prominence due to his leadership in the 1933 anti-Nazi boycott, was perhaps the most active and useful source of inside information and strategic assistance. Unsigned letter to J. M. Ross, July 11, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

202 the support of some local American Legion posts might help sway individual

Congresspersons from their respective districts.57

The letters sent to local posts and individual Legionaries and the articles submitted to American Legion newsletters and local newspapers were strategically framed to target Legionaries’ reservations about the bill, and as such, their content offers a lens into advocates’ perceptions of Legionaries’ hesitations. This literature, much of which was ghostwritten by CCDP or AJC fieldworkers, emphasized that refugee admissions would advance American foreign policy goals and would be a critical step in combating communism. These letters and articles depicted the prototypical refugee as a staunchly anti-communist man from a Baltic nation who fled the Soviet occupation with his nuclear family in tow. Jewish Holocaust survivors were rarely mentioned, or only by way of explaining that Catholics and Protestants, not Jews comprised the majority of the camp population.58 Additionally, these materials invariably underscored that because so many DPs were women and children, their presence would have little impact on

Americans’ job prospects.59 And further, that DP men would be put to work as farmers, gardeners, “house help,” service workers, construction workers, mechanics and in other occupations deemed unworthy of skilled American labor. Rather than hurt the American

57 Vinton E Ziegler to William S. Bernard, “Memorandum, Re: Informal Luncheon Meeting with Interested Members of the American Legion at the Princeton Club on July 2, 1947,” July 3, 1947, folder 16, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

58 Ibid; J. George Freedman to William Bernard, July 7, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “To the Officers of the American Legion,” July 24, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; and for insight into their logics around each aspect of this representation, “Draft: Memorandum on Displaced Persons,” July 17, 1947, folder 18, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

59 J. George Freedman to William Bernard, July 7, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

203 economy as many Legionnaires feared, DP workers, especially the farmers, would be a welcome addition to the “labor-short middle west,” these appeals emphasized.60

While it is impossible to know the extent to which these representations influenced rank-and-file legionaries, the AJC and CCDP project met some success, and a substantial number of local posts across the country passed resolutions in favor of DP admissions. This headway was made much to the surprise of many advocates. One

Jewish legionnaire from Dallas recalled his shock when the resolution that he had proposed in accordance with the guidance of an AJC staff person passed unanimously.

“Frankly, I was somewhat hesitant about presenting this resolution for fear it would be turned down or politely tabled because of the dislike of ‘foreigners,’” he admitted. “I did a little politicing [sic] and trading before the meeting and all went well … much to my surprise and pleasure.”61

By the early fall of 1947, CCDP, AJC and legionnaire advocates had made unexpected headway not only with local chapters, but with the organization’s national leadership, and they decided to attempt what seemed impossible only a few months before: to convince the Americanization Committee to issue a resolution in favor of DP admissions. Unfortunately, the bulk of the CCDP’s internal planning memos on this self- designated “special project” were excised from the organization’s archival holdings.

However, existent materials suggest that advocates believed that emphasizing the fact that DPs would be put to work as farm hands was an important component of this

60 J. George Freedman to William Bernard, July 7, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “To the Officers of the American Legion,” July 24, 1947, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “The Facts about the Displaced Persons,” July 24, 1947, 2-3, folder 17, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

61 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 158-9.

204 campaign. For example, in the early fall of 1947, William Bernard and CCDP fieldworker Charlotte Abbott, acting upon the advice of a Legionnaire from Iowa, organized an intervention with the Legion’s Immigration and Naturalization

Subcommittee Chairperson, Jeremiah Twomey, who they believed was “the key person” dictating the leadership’s stance and who was thought to directly “decide what Green [the chairperson of the Americanization Committee] espouses.”62 While their strategy was multifaceted, one component involved enlisting the support of Archbishop Richard James

Cushing, equipping him with “the rural facts” (their underlining), which he would share with Twomey while pleading with him to reconsider his views. These “rural facts” included the numbers of rural homes and jobs already located for DPs by voluntary organizations, as well as a special appeal from the Interior Department that emphasized the need for farmers in the colonization of Alaska.63

Amazingly, in November of that year, the Americanization Committee issued a resolution in favor of DP admissions, which was then approved at the annual convention.

While CCDP officials had clearly believed that DPs’ placement as farmers might help sway Twomey, who might in turn sway the Americanization Committee, in the end, this was not the primary cause for the reversal. As Leonard Dinnerstein uncovered, the

Legion’s reversal was precipitated by the committee’s realization that only a very small fraction of incoming DPs would be Jews. Apparently, an unnamed member of the

Americanization Committee told an AJC official that the committee was most opposed to

62 Charlotte Abbot, “Re: Souix City, Iowa American Legion,” July 2, 1947, folder: American Legion— Interoffice Memos, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; and for quote, Charlotte Abbot, “Re: National Legion,” July 18, 1952, in ibid.

63 Ibid.

205 the legislation “because they did not want this country flooded with Jews.” The AJC fieldworker responded by explaining that Jews comprised only twenty percent of the camp population, and that among those, the majority “want to go to Palestine and not the

USA.” The Legionnaire advised him to impart this to Green immediately, because with this knowledge, the “Legion’s whole attitude might change.”64

While the Committee remained skeptical—they had, of course, been told from the start that the most DPs were non-Jews—Green agreed to consult with the organization’s national commander, Paul Griffiths, who, it turned out, had recently reversed his own opinion on the matter. At the behest of President Truman, Griffiths visited several DP camps in Europe along with a steady stream of other prominent Americans and legislators. These visits were well orchestrated by U.S. military leaders in Germany working under the direction of General Lucius Clay and Colonel Jerry Sage, both of whom believed that DP admissions were crucial to U.S. foreign policy aims and the latter of whom had testified effectively during that summer’s Congressional hearings. Visitors were taken to well-maintained camps in which they met scores Protestant and Catholic

DPs, all of whom had been informed of the importance of comporting themselves as wholesome, hard-working, and staunchly anti-communist. The presence of Jews in the camps, on the other hand, was downplayed. In the words of an official from the American consulate, “if the large group of Senators [and other key figures] who visited the Munich

DP camps knew how well the stage had been set and the play rehearsed, they would crawl into their holes.” Griffiths, however, was convinced, and he assured the

64 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 159.

206

Americanization Committee that the overwhelming majority of DPs were not Jews. The

Committee, in turn, withdrew its opposition.65

The American Legion’s support, in Daniel Tichenor’s words, was “tepid,” and a bulk of rank-and-file Legionnaires remained opposed to DP admissions.66 Additionally, the Americanization Committee’s resolution did not even explicitly state that the

American Legion favored DP admissions. While it implied as much, their statement was essentially a list of caveats to their implied support. Notably, it instructed Congress that

“special interest groups,” by which they meant the CCDP, AJC and Jewish Americans in general, should be carefully prevented from using the law for “their own ends,” by which they meant the admission of Jews and the eventual dismantling of the ethnic quota system for immigration. Other caveats included the creation of tight screening procedures that would not only match, but exceed normal regulations; preferences for “comrades in arms,” meaning DPs who had fought against the United States’ enemies (the Soviet

Union or Germany); U.S. support for DPs who would prefer to immigrate to Palestine; and the treatment of DP admissions as an emergency matter “divorce[d] from the general subject of immigration,” which meant that DPs should be admitted in a manner that would not lead to changes in the restrictive quota-based system for immigration which the Legion strongly supported.67 These concessions, Bernard later recalled, were necessary to secure their support and the support of a broad range of other groups that

65 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 153-9 (quote on 153).

66 Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 186. For rank and file did not support, various documents in “American Legion Luncheon – Correspondence, Memoranda, Lists, 1947,” folder 16, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

67 “Resolution No. 77 of the American Legion,” folder 18, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

207 were otherwise opposed to immigration reform or to the immigration of Jews specifically.68 And as observers recognized at the time, the support of these groups and the American Legion especially, was “very important.” In Dorr’s words, the “opposition of the Legion … was one of the greatest handicaps to the passage of any legislation.”69

The history of the American Legion’s reversal demonstrates that the agricultural emphasis was more than simply a superficial tool of public retort, as fieldworkers mobilized this argument in behind-the-scenes attempts to sway Legionnaires who were concerned that DPs might deprive veterans of housing and jobs. But in the end, the their reversal was not precipitated by this argument but by the realization that only a limited number of Jewish DPs would migrate under the proposed law, as well as by the CCDP’s decision to support the inclusion of “proper safeguards” against the entry of communists and their decoupling of this admissions act from immigration reform more broadly. The fact that resettlement would function as a farm placement project, however, was not altogether insignificant.70 Legionnaires’ putative concerns about housing and jobs were largely insincere precisely because they already understood that DPs would take jobs and housing that veterans would not want. This fact, unlike the other accommodations, was established from the start. If this had not been the case, these concerns would have taken on much greater importance. The agricultural emphasis, in other words, was a necessary condition for the American Legion’s support, but it alone cannot explain their reversal.

68 Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States,” 12.

69 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 159.

70 Bernard, “Refugee Asylum in the United States”, 12.

208

In conclusion, the CCDP’s and other DP advocates’ decision to frame refugees as workers (and more specifically, as agricultural and domestic workers), as well as their decision to frame resettlement as an economic project (and more specifically, as a farm and domestic labor placement project), were complicated and multiple. This chapter has clarified that while refugee resettlement was constructed as an economic project, it was so in a way that was mutually constituted with its racist bearings and its construction as a surveilled forced assimilation. More than mere rhetoric, these intentions were translated into practice, as was borne out in the Kalmyks’ experience. They were also codified in the law itself, and it is to that subject that we next turn.

209

UNIT THREE

The Legal Acrobatics of an Obfuscated Labor Migration:

The 1948 Displaced Persons Act

210

CHAPTER FIVE

Workers by Law:

A Multifunctional Labor Migration

In 1947, the Stratton Bill died in the House Immigration Subcommittee as a result of what Emmanuel Celler, the only liberalizer on this restrictionist controlled committee, described as a “campaign to stall action.” The Senate version also died in committee for similar reasons. With only two members—Senators Pat McCarran and Chapman

Revercomb, both of whom were outspoken nativists—the Senate Subcommittee on

Immigration refused vote out a bill.1 Yet as Congressional action ground to a halt, public opinion reversed course in dramatic fashion, and by late-1947, lawmakers’ opposition to

DP admissions quickly became a political liability. As one lawmaker reported, he couldn’t walk down the street in his hometown “without someone like his banker,

1 For quote, Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 143.

211 butcher, or former Sunday school teacher stopping him and saying, ‘Senator, why aren’t you a good Christian? Why are you against DPs?’”2

Pressured to pass an admissions act, nativists shifted their strategy when Congress reconvened in 1948. Now claiming to favor DP admissions, restrictionists in both

Subcommittees set out to craft bills that reflected their own interests. The 1948 House bill, known as the Fellows Bill, was more moderate than the Senate’s version, known as the Wiley-Revercomb Bill, and the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons and other liberalizers held out hope that the House-Senate Conference Committee would bear more resemblance to the former. Instead, in a last-minute behind-the-scenes maneuver, Senator

Wiley added two additional restrictionists to the Committee. Now in the majority, anti- immigration lawmakers strong-armed a final bill that combined the most restrictive and discriminatory elements of both versions. The result was a refugee admissions law crafted not by proponents of DP admissions, but by those who had been its staunchest opponents. It was a law that President Truman signed only reluctantly but that nonetheless became the nation’s first official refugee admissions act.3

This chapter shifts from the political movements precipitating the passage of the

1948 Displaced Persons Act to the texture and content of the law itself. It begins by reviewing the Act’s basic frameworks, and in the first section, I make the case, as other historians have, that the Displaced Persons Act was a restrictionist measure in disguise. It established admissions requirements so extensive that if it had been implemented

2 In the words of the American Jewish Committee director, Irving Engel, this shift was “very little short of miraculous.” Ibid, 147, 151; Bernard, “How the Law was Changed to Admit Displaced Persons.”

3 For a legislative history of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 163-182.

212 according to its letter, it seems likely that very few DPs would have been able to enter the

United States. Drawing on the substantial secondary source material on this topic, this section makes clear that the law was restrictive both in general and in racially specific ways. Admissions were limited to European refugees, and among Europeans, the legal intention was to exclude Jews, to preferentially select those who were considered most solidly white, and to mandate that the nation’s overall ethnic makeup would remain unchanged by this one-time surge in admissions.4

The next section turns to two components of this law that pertain to the selection of DPs by occupation: the quota for farmworkers and the occupational preference system.

While these measures are deemphasized in existing scholarship, this section makes the case for their importance. Drawing out their legacy in immigration policy, I locate these measures in larger shifts in political and cultural understandings of citizenship, and I make the case that they laid the legal and ideological foundation for several key tenets of

U.S. refugee and immigration policy that emerged in the last half of the twentieth century. This section also clarifies these components’ multiple hidden purposes. Nativist legislators hoped that the agricultural quota would lead to the exclusion of Jews, and along with the preference for domestic workers, they believed that it would bring about the dispersal and assimilation of all others. Other historians have emphasized these ulterior motives without seriously considering their economic bearings. In crafting an economic reading of these measures, I ask, what happens to our interpretation of the law when we understand it as all three at once?

4 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 163-182; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 66-80; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 1-24.

213 This chapter’s last two sections turn to a third element of the law pertaining to

DPs as workers, section 2(c)3. Despite the lack of attention to it in existing scholarship, this element was arguably the law’s most crucial economic component, and it was certainly the most crucial in setting the frameworks for the emerging resettlement system.

Section 2(c)3 concerned the volagency “assurances” needed in order for a refugee to qualify for admission into the United States. Addressing not only the selection process but also DPs’ labor once in the United States, the measures put in place by 2(c)3 effectively amounted to a requirement that all refugees would work and that they would work in a preassigned job and at a preassigned location, a mandate that was strengthened by the confluence of refugees’ social, economic, and legal conditions and vulnerabilities.

In other words, I make the case that the DP Act was a labor migration not simply because these migrants were viewed as laborers during the admissions process, but because it required them to work and further, that it treated them as coerced, not free labor. Like the agricultural quota and the occupational preferences, 2(c)3 had a lasting legacy. It created a refugee resettlement system that centered on the core question of job placements, and it has become common for all immigrants to have their ability to remain in the United

States tied up in keeping ones job.

In this chapter’s fourth and final section, we turn to 2(c)3’s “nondisplacement clauses,” which were the requirement that the jobs and housing afforded to refugees must not result in the displacement of an American. Like the agricultural quota, the nondisplacement clauses simultaneously brought about several effects at once. On one level, they were restrictionist measures in disguise, intended to make the law unworkable.

They also functioned to mandate refugees’ placement in substandard jobs and housing—

214 quite literally, the nondisplacement requirement meant that refugees were only allowed to have jobs that Americans did not want. More, the nondisplacement clauses created a set of preferential structural conditions for refugees’ placement in rural areas and into the agricultural and domestic labor sectors, a tendency that was amplified by the institutional structures already in place around the issue of “nondisplacement” and by the dispersal mandate in the section eight of the law. Last, refugees’ placement in these sectors and their attendant dispersal throughout rural America was intended to lay the groundwork for the rapid assimilation of the Americanizable DPs and the containment of the racial and political threat that other DPs (specifically, Jewish DPs) were thought to pose to the nation. In short, much like the agricultural quota and occupational preferences, not only did 2(c)3 sculpt this law’s character as a labor migration, but it did so while implicitly yet definitively accomplishing a range of additional aims. The purpose and intervention of this chapter is to open up an understanding of these obfuscated and multifunctional legal dynamics, dynamics that worked together to accomplish many things at once without ever saying as much.

A Racist and Restrictive Law

The 1948 Displaced Persons Act’s restrictiveness was irrefutable. The CCDP- supported Stratton and Fellows Bills would have permitted the entry of 400,000 DPs.

Halving that number, the 1948 law permitted only 100,000 annually over a two-year period. It included strict documentary requirements intended to impede refugees’ entry, and they were required to produce documents such as birth certificates and marriage certificates that were often lost during the war. From security checks to health examinations, the Act subjected refugees to twenty-two separate screenings, many of

215 which exceeded what was required of other immigrants and which were intended to give immigration officials leeway to exclude DPs. As one lawmaker commented at the time,

“it looks like things have been so tightly drawn … that nothing [nobody] can get through it.”5

While these restrictions applied to all DPs, many of its restrictive elements were specifically targeted at Jews. Earlier in 1947 when Congressional nativists still believed that they could thwart a law altogether, Senator Revercomb quipped that “we could solve this DP problem all right if we could work out some bill that would keep out the Jews.”6

The final law bore out that strategy, and a brief review of three of its more potent measures to that effect—the dateline, the Baltic preference and the agricultural quota— exemplify its anti-Semitism.

First introduced by the Senate Subcommittee, the Displaced Persons Act included a dateline proviso: to be eligible under this law, DPs must have arrived in the American zone by December of 1945. Not an arbitrary deadline, of the 220,000 Jews in the

American zone in 1948, only 30-50,000 had arrived by the end of 1945. The purpose of this early cut-off date was to exclude the nearly 200,000 Jews who had arrived in later years fleeing post-war pogroms in Poland and elsewhere. In the words of Senator

Revercomb, the dateline was “the heart of the bill.” It was also at the heart of the opposition to this bill. But in the end, even many moderates who otherwise favored a more permissive bill (for example, persons who favored the higher admissions numbers

5 94 Cong. Rec. 6951 (1948).

6 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 140.

216 proposed by the Fellows and Stratton Bills) remained steadfast on this provision, and it was incorporated into the final law.7

Just as crucial in excluding Jewish DPs was the law’s forty percent quota for persons “whose place of origin or country of nationality has been de facto annexed by a foreign power.” While this language appears neutral, the quota did not apply to those whose nations were occupied by the United States or Britain, only those who fled Soviet- occupied nations.8 This measure’s Cold War imperatives are clear, but its racism was arguably the more crucial consideration. Commonly referred to as the “Baltic preference,” its purpose was to preferentially admit DPs from Baltic nations, namely

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.9 As Bernard Maegi and others have explained, Baltic DPs were seen as the mostly solidly and suitably white of all of the refugee groups. Not only were very few Jews, but many were actually ethnic Germans, and all were depicted as devout Christians and staunch anti-communists. By all accounts, Balts, who were often referred to as “delayed pilgrims,” were the preferred group in the American racial hierarchy of DP desirability.10

In addition to the quota for persons from Baltic nations, the Displaced Persons

Act also contained a 30% quota for agriculturalists. In America and the Survivors of the

Holocaust, Leonard Dinnerstein explained that “the Jews, thought of as the archetypal

7 Ibid, 163-182; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 29; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 19-24; for quote, 94 Cong. Rec. 6868 (1948), quoted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 10.

8 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

9 Persons from other nations—for example, western Poland—would have also been eligible under this quota, but the intention was to preferentially admit persons from Baltic nations. Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 163-182; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 29; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 19-24.

10 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 118-129.

217 urban dwellers, and ‘unassimilable’ within American society, could be more easily kept out … if the legislation required a large percentage of agriculturalists.” Nineteen percent of DPs in the American zone were farmers, but fewer than four percent of Jewish DPs were farmers, and the quota only pertained to those with prior agricultural experience, not to non-farmers who would nonetheless agree to jobs in this sector. Legislators were keenly aware of this quota’s discriminatory impact, and Senator Revercomb directly stated that the intention was to “keep out the Jews.”11

These three measures became particularly potent in combination. Senator Wiley, who helped to mastermind these requirements, explained that together they intended to limit the migration to “good blood.” “We don’t want any rats. We’ve got enough of them already.”12 In fact, if he would have had it his way, there would have been an even more insurmountable barrier for most Jews. The Senate bill bearing his name set a mid-1945 dateline and contained a fifty percent quota for Baltic persons and a fifty percent quota for farmers, which meant that DPs who were neither farmers nor Balts would be categorically excluded. Or in other words, only a miniscule number of Jews would have been eligible.13

That the Displaced Persons Act was crafted to exclude Holocaust survivors is perhaps the most arresting aspect of its racism, but its embedded ethnic and racial biases extended beyond this anti-Semitism. Eligibility was explicitly limited to Europeans, and legislative action was never considered for the millions of refugees in Asia and the

11 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); for quotes, Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 164, 167.

12 For “good blood,” quoted in Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 169.

13 Ibid, 162-175.

218 . To the contrary, refugees of color were only mentioned as a rationale for not admitting Europeans—legislators warned that the law could lead to similar measures for

Chinese, Indian, and Palestinian refugees, among others.14

Even for Europeans, the Displaced Persons Act upheld existent ethno-racial hierarchies. As a result of the efforts of a small group of pro-German lawmakers, the

Displaced Persons Act permitted the entry of ethnic Germans and even created a small preferential quota for this group, despite the fact that many ethnic Germans DPs were suspected Nazi collaborators.15 First developed by the Fellows Bill in order to appease the House subcommittee members who opposed the entry of Eastern Europeans, the law also instituted a “quota mortgaging” provision. For every DP of a given nationality who came to the United States, there would be an attendant elimination of one slot from that nation’s immigration quota. Once fifty percent of a nation’s annual quota were replaced, admissions slots would then be mortgaged from future quotas. In other words, quota mortgaging involved a borrowing of admissions slots from regular immigration quotas so that the nation’s overall ethnic makeup would remain unchanged: each entry would come with an attendant elimination of one future immigrant. If the quota system had not been

14 94 Cong. Rec. 6901 (1948); Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 112; Edward P Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 292; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 144–50; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 28, 146 (1947).

15 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 7793 (1948); Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 165-172; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 81-113;

219 eliminated in 1965, many of these nation’s quotas would have been mortgaged through the first decades of the twenty-first century.16

Economic Imperatives: The Agricultural Quota and the Preference System

While this law’s exclusion of refugees of color is rarely remarked upon, its general restrictiveness, anti-Semitism and ethnic biases have been well fleshed out by existing scholarship. In contrast to these issues, the law’s economic imperatives and structures have received less attention. When not altogether overlooked, its economic formations are either treated as extraneous to the “real story” DP admissions or subsumed within this real story as little more than a foil for legislators’ anti-Semitism.17

For example, much as have I narrated it thus far, historians generally interpret the agricultural quota as an anti-Semitic measure rather than a jobs issue. This oversight seems to have emerged from an effort to uncover what was deliberately concealed by policymakers at the time. Lawmakers were quick to insist that the aim of this quota was

“to assist in filling the demand in the United States for farmworkers,” but to the extent that they claimed that this was its sole purpose, such statements were disingenuous.18 For most, its propensity to exclude Jews was the most crucial purpose; a close second was its assumed ability to ensure that DPs would be fully dispersed and that they would

16 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 165-172; Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 19, 22, 40, 55; Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 108-9. As Roger Daniels points out, the Latvian quota was mortgaged to the year 2274.

17 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 75-81; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 78-9; Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 20.

18 94 Cong. Rec. 6189 (1948).

220 assimilate quickly into white America.19 In short, as the least controversial of its aims, the agricultural quota’s economic purposes were trumpeted by its advocates in a thinly-veiled attempt to paper over their other imperatives. In bringing out how this economic rhetoric was deployed to disguise nativism and anti-Semitism, historians have uncovered what was concealed by the discourse itself.20 However, in the process, they have overlooked or treated as unremarkable what is self-evident about this platform: that the agricultural quota gave preferential treatment to some DPs according to their identities as workers. It was, in no uncertain terms, a preferential quota for a specific group of laborers.

In order to bring out this quota’s hidden anti-Semitism, scholars generally present it in conjunction with the Baltic quota and dateline.21 A different and equally accurate way to narrate it is alongside the law’s new preference system. Not a lone economic preference, the agricultural quota was the first plank in the law’s sixth section which created a formal preference system overriding the preferences in regular immigration law and instead emphasizing DPs as laboring subjects. Like this first preference, its second preference again addressed DPs as workers. Without creating a numerical quota, it instructed admissions officials to give preferential treatment to nine additional categories of workers: “household, construction, clothing, and garment workers, and other workers needed in the locality in the United States in which such persons propose to reside; or eligible displaced persons possessing special educational, scientific, technological or

19 Dinnerstein, Genizi, Loescher and Scanlan give more weight to the agricultural quota’s anti-Semitic bearings. Maegi emphasizes that the measure “reflected persistent racialized anxieties about the assimilability of eastern Europeans.” Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 116.

20 One of the earliest and most definitive works to uncover and thoroughly lay out the DP Act’s anti- Semitism was Leonard Dinnerstein’s America and the Survivors of the Holocaust.

21 Ibid.

221 professional qualifications.”22 Unlike normal immigration law which prioritized family reunification, these occupational preferences ranked before the preference for blood relatives of American citizens, which was relegated to the third and last preference category in the DP Act.23 The preferences that applied to other immigrants were eliminated altogether in this system that primarily viewed DPs as human capital: as persons whose desirability as potential citizen subjects was assessed according to their expected contribution to regional and national economic desires.

The historical legacy of the agricultural quota and these related occupational preferences has been significant. As Mae Ngai explains, these planks “introduced into immigration policy the idea that American economic preferences should determine the selection of immigrants—an idea … which quickly became naturalized as an assumption of immigration policy.” Indeed, just four years later, economic and occupational preferences were integrated into regular immigration law. They took deeper root as the quota system was fully supplanted by the preference system in 1965, and they continue to the present day, a fact that owes its legacy to the 1948 Displaced Persons Act.24

Just as crucially, the agricultural quota and occupational preferences helped to naturalize the idea that not just immigrants, but refugees—persons who flee their home countries due to persecution or the fear of persecution and persons whose admission into a third country derives from that nation’s moral core (at least according to the legal theories that undergird this body of law)—could rightfully be treated as workers and

22 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

23 Ibid. Regular (non-refugee) immigration policies were governed by the Immigration Act of 1924, as amended in 1940.

24 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 236.

222 selected according to the receiving nation’s economic desires.25 To be sure, this notion was already well-established during the debates preceding the passage of this law, and it found even deeper roots in American ideologies about deserving immigrant subjects and the place of the foreign born in U.S. society. Yet the inclusion of these planks into the

Displaced Persons Act is important because it codified these assumptions into law, because this law marked the foundation of U.S. refugee law, and because the United

States’ insistence on treating refugees as workers—and more specifically, as workers who should labor in the nation’s worst economic sectors—not only persisted, but intensified throughout the twentieth century, especially once refugee migrations came to be dominated by people of color, a shift that accompanied the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the “dirty wars” in Latin America and the rise of neoliberal economic policies.

More than legal details, these transformations in refugee and immigration law were a part of a larger shift in political and cultural understandings of citizenship. As

Aihwa Ong explains, the postwar moment marked a rise in a human capital model of citizenship, which was characterized by the use of business-economic logics to understand a person’s fitness to belong. Through this framework, citizenship was conceived as “the civic duty of the individual to reduce his or her burden on society, and instead to build up history her own human capital.”26 With the exception of Ngai’s brief analysis of the Displaced Persons Act’s preference system in Impossible Subjects, historians’ lack of comment on this provision—the fact that it’s treated as

25 Ibid.

26 Ong, Buddha Is Hiding, 21.

223 unremarkable—speaks to the extent to which the vision of the citizen as human capital has been integrated into the American national common sense.

In bringing out the agricultural quota’s economic bearings, its emergence within an economically-oriented preference system and the legacy of this admissions framework, I do not mean to deemphasize the agricultural quota’s other imperatives—the exclusion of Jews and the forced assimilation of non-Jews. While other scholars have focused on distilling out the quota’s core purpose (and thus in doing so, have dismissed its economic imperatives), I suggest a different way of thinking about its multiplicity. In my view, the various, overlapping aims and purposes embedded in this platform makes its economic formations more—not less—important as a topic of historical inquiry, and vice-a-versa. It means that the legislative reconfiguration of the refugee migration into a labor migration was, at its origins, tied up in the way that it was also a racial project and an unprecedented endeavor in immigrant social control. The agricultural quota brought about all three at once, mutually constituting them into being.

“Suitable Employment:” 2(c)3 and the Jobs Mandate

“‘Eligible displaced person’ means a displaced person … for whom [among other requirements] assurances in accordance with the regulations of the Commission have been given that such person, if admitted into the United States, will be suitably employed without displacing some other person from employment and that such person, and the members of such person's family who shall accompany such person and who propose to live with such person, shall not become public charges and will have safe and sanitary housing without displacing some other person from such housing….” – The Displaced Persons Act, Section 2(c)327

In addition to the agricultural quota and the occupational preferences, the law’s second section, part (c), component three, hereafter referred to as 2(c)3, was critical in

27 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

224 shaping the DP Act’s configuration as a labor migration. This section specified that in order to be considered for admission, all displaced persons must first have an “assurance” submitted in his or her name with the Displaced Persons Commission (DPC), which was the government agency created to oversee DP resettlement. While the law did not define

“assurances,” what it referred to was well known. The use of assurances, which were also sometimes referred to as “guarantees,” “affidavits of support” or just “affidavits,” were developed under the Truman Directive in order to circumvent the ban on persons likely to become public charges, a clause that would have otherwise led to the exclusion of many refugees. During this migration, private welfare organizations, referred to as voluntary agencies or volagencies, stepped in as “sponsors” for DPs. Each admitted refugee was matched with a sponsoring organization, which signed a pledge (the affidavit) that they would ensure that their sponsored refugees would not become public charges. As Truman framed it, the affidavit was merely a legal mechanism that would enable DPs to migrate to the United States without needing to overhaul existing immigration law.28 More significant than he admitted, the advent of the sponsorship system marked a turning point in American immigration policy: it marked a shift in the purview of state involvement, from an immigration policy focused primarily on questions concerning an im/migrant’s right to enter and remain in the United States (admissions, naturalization and deportation) to one that was concerned with officially overseeing post-entry social control—in other

28 There was already an individual sponsorship system in place for persons who would have otherwise been excluded due to the ban on the entry of persons likely to become a public charge. This directive marked the expansion of the sponsorship system to an entire class of immigrants, regardless of their economic status. President, “Immigration to United States of Certain Displaced Persons and Refugees in Europe, Statement and Directive 225” (December 22, 1945); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 92.

225 words, resettlement. And second, it also marked a shift toward deputizing private agencies as the official administrators of U.S. immigration policy.29

The Stratton and Ferguson bills had called for an assurance system similar to the one put in place by the Truman Directive, but the affidavit mandated by the 1948 law was more extensive. Under the previous system, affidavits only required volags to offer their assurance that specific immigrants would not become public charges.30 While this component remained, 2(c)3 specified that they must also guarantee that DPs will be

“suitably employed” upon arrival and that their placement in that job would not displace another person from employment. Moreover, volags were required to guarantee that the specified person or family would “have safe and sanitary housing without displacing some other person from such housing.”31 As this section and the next explore, the addition of the employment mandate and of the jobs and housing and nondisplacement requirements to the assurance system impacted what this admissions act meant in a fundamental way.

In requiring refugees to have an agency-filed affidavit guaranteeing their “suitable employment,” 2(c)3 did not technically require refugees to work, only that an agency would guarantee this fact. Yet the reality, I argue, was that refugees’ full employment was precisely what was mandated. In order to be eligible to immigrate to the United

States, DPs first needed to agree to a specific job offer, and not just upon arrival or right

29 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 103-8; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 113-4; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 114; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 346-46; Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, 103.

30 94 Cong. Rec. 6794 (1948); Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Emergency Temporary Displaced Persons Admissions Act, H.R. 2910, 80th Cong. (1947); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 92.

31 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

226 before leaving, but before the extensive in-camp screening process and security checks could begin. Declining the job offer, which often took the form of a written labor contract, would disqualify them for admission. In practice, this meant that these survivors of World War II, and some of them of the Holocaust, all of whom were desperate to leave the camps, were compelled to accept whatever job was offered to them.32

Further, the jobs requirement was made law after their arrival in the United States by the way that refugees’ social and economic vulnerabilities interacted with the legal structures governing immigrant deportation. While the law did not explicitly ban them from quitting their assigned job, DPs were prohibited from seeking financial aid from public institutions, even for one-time food assistance or emergency medical care. If they did so, they would be subject to deportation. Because the majority of DPs had no financial assets, leaving ones assigned job was a near impossibility. Doing so threatened to turn them into “public charges” (persons who needed assistance from public institutions), at which point they could be subject to deportation. Quitting after one had found a new job was also a significant risk. DPs’ primary sponsors were often their initial employers, and leaving their initial job for another could leave them without an affidavit.

Doing so also threatened to sour their relationship with the volagency that had found them this job and could decrease the likelihood that this agency would assist them if an emergency situation arose in the future. Volagencies, for example, sometimes stepped in with emergency loans or food assistance in order to circumvent refugees’ need for public support, which would have rendered them deportable. Finally, the use of deportation (or the threat of deportation) to mandate refugees’ employment was further expanded by the

32 Rosenfield, Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 7.

227 amended DP Act of 1950. This law authorized the removal of those who had not accepted their assigned jobs in “good faith,” which was sometimes taken to mean persons who quit their assigned jobs too soon after their arrival.33

The idea that having a job was a requirement of living in the United States was also made law extralegally: by the way that it was impressed upon DPs by their sponsoring organizations, which by legal design were refugees’ primary source of social support and guidance. These agencies, which needed federal approval in order to participate in the program, were asked by the DPC to tell refugees that they were legally mandated to hold their assigned jobs for a substantial period of time, generally at least a year; to dissuade those who tried to leave; and to create additional written work contracts exceeding those required by the law. Agencies that failed to do so were reprimanded by the DPC, and by mid-1949, the vast majority complied.34 As a result, there was a general understanding among refugees that they were required by law to keep their assigned jobs for a substantial period of time unless granted permission by their sponsor, and regardless of the work conditions they faced, of other job offers they may have received, or of their desire to reunite with relatives who had been resettled elsewhere. And because maintaining a positive relationship with one’s sponsor had a real impact on DPs’ life prospects, even when refugees knew that they had the right to live and work where they

33 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); An Act to Amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. 81-555, 64 Stat. 262 (1950).

34 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 123-4, 181-2.

228 pleased, these social pressures from their sponsors and volagencies sufficed to keep most tethered their initial placements.35

While the policy mechanisms that would bring about this labor mandate were not fully detailed by the letter of the law, any ambiguity about the intention to admit DPs as workers was laid to rest by the legal determinations that accompanied the law. Most vividly, in order to pass the law, legislators were required to suspend the ban against contract laborers, which they did in the law’s fifth section. In doing so, the Displaced

Persons Act was a direct legacy of the nation’s previous and ongoing foreign labor programs which paved the way for the regularized suspension of this clause, especially for foreign agricultural workers.36 Additionally, the DPC made a legal determination that even if DPs had the capacity to support themselves, they were nonetheless required to work. While this interpretation was not supported by the precise language of the law itself, DPC commissioners sidestepped these nuances when explaining the act to resettlement workers, and this administrative decision, along with the aforementioned on- the-ground realities, in effect made it law. In doing so, the DP Act became the nation’s first immigration law (excepting contract labor programs, which did not admit persons for permanent residency) to make such a requirement. This requirement would soon become a staple of American immigration policy and it owes its origins to this law.37

35 Roland Elliott to Church Leaders in Church World Service, “Additional Information Regarding ‘Public Charge’ Provisions, Published by the Displaced Persons Commission,” December 6, 1950, folder: “DPs and Refugees, 1950,” Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

36 This is what Kitty Calavita refers to as the agricultural exception, Calavita, Inside the State, 23.

Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); An Act to Amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. 81-555, 64 Stat. 262 (1950)

37 Rosenfield, Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 7.

229 The Nondisplacement Clauses

Just as important in making the character of this labor migration were 2(c)3’s nondisplacement requirements. The affidavit created by 2(c)3 not only required volags to certify that DPs would be “suitably employed,” but that they would be employed

“without displacing some other person from employment.” Additionally, the affidavit required agencies to locate living arrangements for the specified person or family, and this housing requirement also contained a nondisplacement clause. Refugees must occupy their living quarters “without displacing another person from such housing.”38 These provisions, which I refer to as the nondisplacement clauses, had a critical impact on the nature of this immigration act. Not only did they sculpt its character as a labor migration, but they did so while implicitly yet definitively accomplishing a range of additional aims.

In other words, 2(c)3’s economic functions were mutually constructed with its other imperatives. As such, this section considers 2(c)3’s economic and non-economic impacts jointly, and for the purposes of clarity, I have aggregated them into four key points.

First, the non-displacement clauses functioned to mandate refugees’ placement in substandard jobs and housing, and in doing so, they converted advocates’ promises around these issues into legal mandates. To appease nativists concerned about DPs’ impact on white workers, the CCDP and other proponents of DP admission argued that

DP workers posed no threat to Americans because they would be placed in substandard jobs that others did not want. Advocates suggested that this would be all but inevitable because everyone involved was committed to relegating them to the agricultural and domestic labor economies and other “noncompetitive markets.” This logic, which was

38 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

230 tied up in the racialized marginality of these sectors and relied on volagencies’ promises that they would resettle them in this manner, was effective in lessening some opposition.

But as Senator Wiley argued, “mere promises will not make houses or jobs. What we need are guaranties.”39 The jobs non-displacement clause did just that. In no uncertain terms, it legally mandated what advocates had claimed was inevitable regardless: that

Americans would not be displaced from employment. As Chapman Revercomb explained, this clause was put in place because “we do not want an influx of persons who would come in and push our own people out. We do not want an influx of persons who would take away the jobs of our people.”40

While clearly designed to benefit American workers, the jobs non-displacement clause did so to the detriment of refugees. It set in place a structural condition that fostered DPs’ placement in substandard economic sectors because directing DPs to these sectors was a sure way to ensure that they did not displace Americans. While this intent is somewhat obfuscated in the law’s wording, its meaning was well understood. It was a mandate to volagencies, government agencies and other resettlers that refugees should be given jobs that Americans would not want, meaning the nation’s most grueling, poorly paid, and socially stigmatized jobs.

The housing non-displacement mandate served a similar purpose and led to a similar outcome. While proponents of the Stratton Bill had presented a host of explanations as to why DPs, despite restrictionists’ claims otherwise, would not exacerbate the nation’s housing crisis or take scarce housing from returning veterans, this

39 94 Cong. Rec. 6448 (1948).

40 94 Cong. Rec. 6182 (1948).

231 clause transformed these promises into a legal mandate. By law, volagencies would be required to place refugees in living quarters that would not otherwise be occupied by an

American. In other words, it amounted to a requirement that DPs could only occupy housing that Americans did not want—they could either be placed in vacant housing or in arrangements that most Americans deemed subpar. This intention is made clear by the legal debates surrounding the wording of the housing clause. The 1948 law noted that the housing must be “safe” and “sanitary,” but a previous version also included the word

“decent.” The fact that this word was excised from the final version is critical, and its removal stands as proof of legislators’ intention that DPs could be funneled into substandard living conditions.41 In short, both the jobs and housing non-displacement clauses functioned as nativist measures: they created an implicit yet definitive mandate that DPs should be relegated to a second tier economic and social class, and because this relegation was brought about in the process of fulfilling the assurance requirements, the non-displacement clauses created a system in which held private welfare agencies and the everyday Americans involved in resettlement accountable for implementing this mandate.

A second purpose of the non-displacement clauses was to throw a wrench in the implementation of this law and to impede DPs’ migration to the United States. Historians agree that these requirements, like many of the law’s most stringent elements, were instituted precisely because they would impede the implementation of the law and thus allow the United States to pass an admissions act while simultaneously insuring that few would be able to migrate. The need for volagencies to find jobs and housing for refugees before the extensive in-camp screening procedures could begin was already a significant

41 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 6950-6951 (1948).

232 obstacle. But at a house-by-house, job-by-job level, certifying that each DP would not displace an American “would be so time-consuming as to create an almost insurmountable obstacle in permitting any substantial number of persons to be admitted,” policy analysts believed. The problem was not that refugees would actually raise the unemployment rate. This law admitted a relatively small number of persons, and at mid- century, like through most of U.S. history, the overwhelming impact of immigration was to facilitate, rather than stymie economic growth. The difficulty, however, arose in needing to “secure employment and housing with complete assurances that people were not being displaced.” Doing so, the CCDP worried, would be “almost impossible.”42 How would volags certify American’s nondisplacement? How long would jobs or living quarters need to be vacant before it was clear that refugees would not be displacing other housing seekers? If Americans applied for these jobs or housing during the delay between when the assurances were issued and the refugees arrived (there was often a wait of six months or longer), would the assurances then be invalidated? Left to administrative decision, these and other critical questions remained unanswered by the law. As a result, the extent to which the nondisplacement clauses would hinder DPs’ entry was unclear, but the very need to create mechanisms to certify the uncertifiable was in itself a significant obstacle.

While unemployment remained low, the housing shortage was acute and well known, and this context renders this hidden purpose of the nondisplacement clauses all the more apparent. As Democratic Senator Claude Pepper remarked,

42 “Arguments Frequently Raised Against Admission of Displaced Persons,” folder 13, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Common Council for American Unity, “Suggested Amendments to S. 2242, The Proposed Displaced Persons Act of 1948,” March 10, 1948, folder 20, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records.

233 “Where are the empty houses into which they are going to be put? Where is the safe and sanitary housing project which is empty [and] awaiting them? If we are not going to receive anybody except to put him in a vacant house or a vacant apartment or a vacant room, how many are we going to receive? In other words, I am beginning to wonder what we are really going to accomplish by the bill. It looks like as if it has been so tightly drawn, Mr. President, that nothing can get through it.”43

“Where are the empty houses into which they are going to be put?” Pepper meant this rhetorically, as a means of pointing out how these clauses were designed to make the law unworkable. But policymakers realized that there was also a literal answer to this question: in rural areas. The housing crisis was more severe urban areas than in small towns, and in rural America, there was very little shortage at all due to the decade long rural-to-urban exodus.44 Requiring volagencies to place DPs in housing without displacing another therefore facilitated DPs’ placement in farms jobs and worked against their settlement in cities.

Indeed, a third function of the jobs and housing nondisplacement clauses was to create a set of preferential structural conditions for refugees’ placement in rural areas and hence, into the agricultural and domestic labor sectors. This was the case for the housing requirement not only because of the spatial distribution of the housing shortage but because of the occupational structure of these economic sectors. Domestic service and farm labor were two of the nation’s only occupations in which it was common practice to provide workers with living arrangements. “We all know that on many farms where workers or hired, or where tenants farm, housing is already provided,” one legislator reminded his colleagues by way explaining the logic behind the housing nondisplacement

43 94 Cong. Rec. 6950-6951 (1948).

44 94 Cong. Rec. 6189 (1948).

234 requirement. Others added to this list, mentioning the abundance of available housing: for live-in maids; on military bases in rural areas (during the war, these bases had been used to house POW workers who were contracted out to local farmers); and in the housing barracks provided for Braceros and migrant laborers. In fact, one of the reasons that restrictionists excised the word “decent” from the housing requirement was to ensure that

DPs could be placed in these quarters, thus paving the way for their placement as maids and in stoop labor and tenant-type farming jobs.45

These institutionalized preferences produced by the housing clause were further amplified by the jobs nondisplacement requirement. Requiring DPs to be placed in a job without displacing another did not simply mean that they would be given jobs that others did not want, although that in itself was an important consideration. A dual purpose was to ensure their placement in the agricultural and domestic labor economies, as these sectors were some of the nation’s only occupations in which displacing a white American was seen an inherent impossibility. To be sure, many white Americans still worked as domestic workers and waged farm laborers, but in the white American cultural imagination, these occupations were constructed as distinctly non-white forms of labor.

Here, the Bracero and H-2 contexts for the DP labor program are clear, especially in respect to farm work. These programs not only helped to solidify the racialization of that sector, but they also produced ideological and institutional shifts around this notion of non-displacement. These guest worker programs were established on the pretense that there was a severe shortage of American labor in the agricultural economy, and they

45 Ibid; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 203 (1947); for quote, 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948).

235 helped to entrench the correlation between non-displacement and agricultural work in the national common sense. That non-displacement meant agricultural jobs was well- understood by observers at the time. It was, after all, the argument that DP advocates had made about DP admissions from the start, simply without the legal mandate.46

Just as crucially, the Bracero and H-2 Programs led to the development of a massive government infrastructure devoted to assessing U.S. workers’ non-displacement.

These programs required regional branches of the U.S. Employment Agency to first verify that bringing guest workers to their locale would not depress wages or lead to the displacement of Americans from the agricultural sector. While the Displaced Persons Act does not mention if or how U.S. workers’ non-displacement would be verified for this program, in a sense, it did not need to: a whole network of government agencies already existed to verify non-displacement claims, and this network was almost exclusively focused on agricultural work. Not incidentally, this network was almost universally aligned with the interests of farm employers, not farmworkers, and local employment agencies regularly certified shortages in which none existed. Also responsible for determining each region’s “prevailing rate” for farmworkers, they regularly set wages far below local standards, which meant both Bracero and H-2 workers’ exploitation as well as declining wages for other farmworkers.47

While both nondisplacement clauses singularly facilitated the transformation of

DPs into farm and domestic workers, they became all the more potent in combination.

The task of finding a job offer and housing arrangements for a refugee before he or she

46 Calavita, Inside the State; Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State”; Ngai, Impossible Subjects.

47 Ibid.

236 arrived (and one that would be offered sight unseen and would be reserved for them until their arrival) was difficult in and of itself. The nondisplacement requirements intensified this task, and the result was that agricultural and domestic labor placements simply became the easiest, least time consuming, and least legally nebulous solution. As such, rather than weighing their significance in isolation, I suggest that we think of them as interlocking constraints intended to produce a definitive occupational mandate.

The DP Act’s dispersal mandate offered a final lock in this interlock created by

2(c)3, and the result was a law that observers believed would effectively turn refugee resettlement into a farms and domestic labor placement scheme. The dispersal mandate came in the law’s eighth section, and it instructed the DPC to “formulate and issue regulations for the purpose of obtaining the most general distribution and settlement of persons admitted under this Act throughout the United States and their Territories and possessions.”48 Sending refugees to rural areas (and by extension, to farms jobs) was a sure means of bringing about their full dispersal, as was placing women as domestic workers in Americans’ homes throughout the nation. Like 2(c)3, nowhere does Section 8 mention specific sectors, but these occupational consequences were intentional. The legislators who supported Sections Two and Eight unabashedly explained that they would

“assist in filling the demand in the United States for farmworkers” and domestic workers.

Many analysts believed that even without explicit agricultural quotas, the dispersal and nondisplacement requirements alone would mean that those sent to the agricultural economy would be “far in excess of 50 percent.”49

48 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

49 For “to assist in filling the demand,” 94 Cong. Rec. 6189 (1948); for “in excess of 50 percent,” ibid, 6794.

237 While this interlocking system created structural conditions that led to a clear occupational mandate, the purpose of this mandate exceeded the economic. As was borne out during the debates over DP admissions, in the American cultural imagination farming functioned as a racialized litmus test of immigrant assimilability. It was an activity that was seen as facilitating desirable European immigrants’ rapid ascent into “true

Americanness” while keeping undesirable immigrants of color at the boundaries of the nation. As such, in mandating farm placements, legislators saw themselves as laying the groundwork for facilitating the rapid assimilation of the Americanizable DPs while containing the racialized and political threat that Jewish DPs posed to the nation.

This fourth consequence of 2(c)3 was also accomplished through 2(c)3’s embedded preferences for domestic labor. Bringing DP women into the homes of white

American families as domestic workers was seen as a means of facilitating their ascent into Americanness, and by extension, the ascent of their families. Not incidentally, this occupation had also long been constructed as a properly degraded, yet civilizing form of labor for women of color, working class white women, and others deemed potentially threatening to the nation’s social order. Like agricultural labor, domestic work both contained the immigrant Other, while elevating the deserving and capable (i.e. white) immigrant subject into the national “family”.

In respect to this imperative to mandate DPs’ assimilation, the fact that agricultural and domestic jobs would mean dispersed, mostly rural placements was seen as just as crucial as the fact that rural placements would lead to jobs in these sectors. For farmers, it was not just their physical engagement with the soil that was thought to transform them from displaced persons into “delayed pilgrims,” but the sheer fact of

238 living “on the broad prairies.” While this idea was tied up in American cultural ideologies about rural life, this logical correlation between rurality and assimilation had an additional layer. Settled in family units on farms, DPs would be isolated from their friends and communities and from the established Eastern European ethnic communities in the nation’s larger cities. As Morse explained, one of the reasons for the law’s agricultural emphasis was to insure that refugees would be “properly distributed,” his euphemism for scattering them throughout rural areas. “Proper distribution of the persons who come in means a rapid assimilation of them,” he explained.50

Conclusion

Did lawmakers order refugees’ dispersal in order to mandate their employment in these sectors or did they orchestrate their employment in these sectors in order to bring about their dispersal? At the time, some claimed that the former was the goal, while others emphasized the latter. But the most accurate answer is “yes.” The law was designed to do both at once while also taking care of a host of other aims: to ensure that

DPs would not exacerbate the housing shortage; to fulfill the nativist desire to force these new Americans to start at the bottom of the nation’s economic and social ladder, laboring away at grueling, unsavory jobs that were as essential to the national economy as they were undesirable to most white Americans; to ensure that if they did displace others from employment, those workers would be people of color, not white workers, particularly not white men; to hinder DPs’ immigration while seeming to welcome them; to carefully

50 Ugo Carusi to The Secretary of State, “Outline of Plans to Implement Legislation Which May Be Enacted to Permit the Immigration of Displaced Persons to the United States”, January 16, 1948, Gov. Depts. – State Dept., Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 155– 229. For “on the broad prairies, 94 Cong. Rec. 6447 (1948); for “proper distribution,” 94 Cong. Rec. 7793- 4 (1948).

239 control DPs’ adjustment to American life and prevent the formation of viable ethnic communities.

Through 2(c)3 all of these were tied up together and addressed simultaneously.

The law’s other economic components, the agricultural quota and economic preference system, similarly served multiple functions, at once excluding Jews and forcing the assimilation of all others while mandating DPs as coerced laborers for the nation’s shadow economic sectors. In doing so the Displaced Persons Act was not just an immigration law, but one that established the foundations of federal refugee resettlement as all of the above.

240

CHAPTER SIX

Constitutive Connections: Patriarchal Families, Moral Economies, Religious

Work/ers, and the DP Labor Migration

The agricultural quota and section 2(c)3 were not the only parts of this law in which multiple intentions were bundled into one plan. The Displaced Persons Act was a law with hidden aims and unstated intentions, a law comprised of platforms which appeared to be about one specific thing, but in reality brought about multiple outcomes at once. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the texture of the DP labor migration was produced not just by the components of this law that were outwardly concerned with DPs as workers, but by its various other elements and by the resettlement structures that emerged from them.

This chapter turns to three such elements: resettlement’s familial structure, its moral veneer, and its constitution as a religious project. In respect to the first point, I argue that this was a law that treated DPs not just as individual workers but as members of families and that the whole family unit was assessed as a unit of labor. I show how this

Act created a patriarchal migratory structure that had deep impacts on DPs’ ability to

241 migrate to the United States, on their economic conditions upon arrival, on the character of this migration as a labor migration, and on the ideological work of resettling refugees.

In respect to the Act’s moral veneer, I argue that the geopolitical necessity of maintaining the moral logics that infused this endeavor resulted in a labor migration that was obfuscated by necessity. This section explores several aspects of the legal acrobatics of obfuscation, again assessing their impact on how this migration could function as a labor migration. The section on the law’s religious formations makes sense of the diverse ways in which resettlement functioned as a site of religious formation and explores the implications of these formations on resettlement’s construction as a labor migration. The impact of the religious structure and of the use of religious groups to resettle refugees is difficult to underestimate, and I argue that religious resettlers were the critical cog that made this migration work and that made it work the way that it did, not just economically but even more broadly.

As the last chapter revealed, resettlement centered on the core question of job placements, and as this chapter adds, it did so in critical relationship to the law’s familial structure, to the geopolitical stakes of maintaining resettlement’s moral veneer, and to its religious structure and formations. The chapter concludes by suggesting a visual metaphor for how we might understand the connections, implications, and overall work of these various components and of the U.S. resettlement system itself.

Part One ~ The Labor of Family: Gender, Patriarchy and the DP Labor Migration

When Maryland Democrat Millard Tydings took to the Senate floor during the floor debates over the Displaced Persons Act he touted the plan to resettle refugees in family units as proof that the United States, unlike other nations, admitted displaced

242 persons on a “purely humanitarian basis.” In his words, the family structure exemplified how the United States took an “unselfish approach” while other nations took a “selfish approach.” The Displaced Persons Commission’s final report to Congress echoed this logic. The DPC Commissioners pointed to the family policy to make the case that in the

United States, refugee resettlement was not a “recruitment project or a labor enterprise.”

It was simply an effort to “solve the displaced persons problem.”1

This section uses Tydings’s and the DPC’s comments as a touchstone in order to open up a deeper understanding of gender, families and the DP migration. We begin by laying the groundwork, explaining how the admissions system was structured along familial lines. We next explore the relationship between this migration’s familial structure and its economic imperatives, and we conclude by considering other kinds of

“work” that this structure did for Americans and American national interests.

Throughout, we pay particular attention to the character of the familial structure—a character, as will soon become clear, that was sexist, patriarchal and heteronormative. We also turn a close eye to the consequences of this structure: for refugees, for their resettler- employers, for the nation, and for our own understandings of this labor migration. What emerges from this exploration is an understanding that these two constitutive attributes of the DP migration—that it was structured along familial lines and that it treated DPs as laborers—were not mutually exclusive, despite what Tydings and DPC would have us believe. Instead, the DP migration was a labor migration in which workers were treated not just as individuals but as members of nuclear patriarchal families, in which these families were treated as economic units, and in which the labor of this familial economic

1 For Tydings, 94 Cong. Rec. 6570 (1948); for the DPC, United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 56.

243 unit exceeded the sum of its constituent parts and even exceeded the material. In short, the patriarchal familial structure must be understood as a fundamental characteristic of this labor migration.

A Heteropatriarchal Admissions Structure

Tydings and the DPC commissioners were correct to suggest that the DP Act was structured to admit and resettle DPs in family units. But what they did not mention and what seemed entirely unproblematic to them and to other observers was the extent to which the law imposed patriarchal and heteronormative frameworks and restrictions upon

DP families. The law defined the family narrowly: a man and/or woman (either a single parent or a married heterosexual couple) and their dependent children under the age of twenty one. Children and married women did not apply as individuals, but as dependents of their father or husband, who was classified as the “primary applicant.” Sorting refugee applicants into primary applicants and dependents had the consequence of creating a coverture system for married women and children: treated as subsidiaries of their husband/father, they received their eligibility derivatively and were not in fact required to be IRO-certified DPs nor to have job assurances.2

Setting up the family-based migration in this manner had a direct impact on DPs’ migration prospects. This arrangement benefited some mixed-status families because

2 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); Case Analyst, “Eligibility,” n.d., Records of the General Counsel, Records of the Legal Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 163. The law did not specify which spouse would be the primary applicant and which would be treated as a dependent of the other, but legislators’ intention and the law’s unspoken assumption were clear. The primary applicant was the head of household and the head of household was assumed to be the man. The dependent spouse, through the logic of this patriarchal common sense turned legal mandate, was the woman. Eventually, the DPC’s legal division determined that women could be listed as the primary applicant, but this exception was generally directed toward unmarried or widowed women with children, rather than those who were currently married. Under the 1948 law, wives of agricultural labors also received derivative status as farmers, qualifying them to accompany their husbands under the agricultural quota.

244 non-DP wives and children were able to migrate with their DP husbands or fathers.

However, the same did not always apply in its reverse, which meant that DP women who chose to marry men who were not IRO-certified refugees would risk losing the right to third country resettlement. Families in which the children were the breadwinners and the parents were unable to work—a situation that was not uncommon in the camps—would also be excluded, as would those in which only the children were certified DPs. More, children over the age of twenty one were denied the right to migrate with their parents and siblings.3 Due to the DPC’s ruling that women could be primary applicants, families with female breadwinners were not impermissible, but in practice, these families were seen as less desirable by sponsoring agencies and potential employers. Mid-twentieth- century ideas about poverty and dependency were deeply gendered, and women-led families faced the sometimes insurmountable challenge of needing an agency-backed assurance that they and their families would not become public charges.4

This narrow nuclear definition of the family was incongruous with the on-the- ground reality in the camps in even broader ways. “Among the DPs,” especially among

Jews, “many family units consist[ed] of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, who are the only survivors of large families,” explained one policy analyst at the time. The law failed to recognize such family units, requiring each of the individuals to apply separately, which meant that “dependent” family members would be

3 “Suggested Amendments in the Wiley (Revercomb) Bill,” n.d., 2-3, folder 20, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records; Common Council for American Unity, “Suggested Amendments to S. 2242, The Proposed Displaced Persons Act of 1948,” March 10, 1948, 2, folder 20, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records.

4 For historical context on the gendering of ideas about poverty and dependency in respect to women immigrants and the “likely to become a public charge” provision, Martha Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870-1965 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005), 176–198.

245 denied entry and the remaining persons would be sent to different resettlement locations.5

In short, families that did not hew to nuclear, heteropatriarchal norms were quite literally broken up—they were either separated or categorically excluded.

Finally, this admissions structure sometimes hindered the migration of even those whose family structures hewed to the narrow ideas prescribed by this law. If one family member failed the health exam, security check or any one of the host of additional screenings levied against DPs, the entire family would be rejected.6 Such was the case for several dozen Kalmyk families, including Katija and Boris Unkov and their three young children, who were all rejected because Boris Unkov had stolen a pair of shoes from a military supply shop, a crime that was determined to be a crime of moral turpitude, and hence grounds for exclusion.7

The Impact of the Heteropatriarchal Familial Structure on the D.P. Labor

Migration

While Tydings and the DPC report were right to observe that the Displaced

Persons Act processed and resettled applicants in family units (however restrictive the definition may have been and despite its negative consequences), their extrapolation that the admissions act was therefore “purely humanitarian” and not a “recruitment project or a labor enterprise” was flawed. To be sure, this program’s familial structure distinguished

5 “Suggested Amendments in the Wiley (Revercomb) Bill,” n.d., 2-3, folder 20, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records; Common Council for American Unity, “Suggested Amendments to S. 2242, The Proposed Displaced Persons Act of 1948,” March 10, 1948, 2, folder 20, box 291, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records.

6 One could lose their status if a particular family member was rejected. Exceptions were made, but refugee families were urged not to separate. Joe Mow to Benjamin Bushong, December 6, 1952, file 51, box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 178.

7 Due to advocacy from Kalmyk leaders, Kapatzinsky and others, their rejection was later overturned. Folder 64, box 3, Series 4/1/6, BHLA. For more on Boris Unkov and other families in similar predicaments, Stepanow to Kapatzinsky, c. January, 1952, Dmitrii Konstantinovich Kapatsinskii Papers, BAR-KAP, RBML.

246 it from other labor migrations of its day. The Bracero and H-2 Programs, for example, admitted only workers, not their families, and other nations’ DP programs also often required DP workers to leave their loved ones behind.8 In a certain technical sense, it is also true that the United States willfully admitted some DPs as nonworkers: the law categorized women and children as the dependents of DP workers, rather than as workers themselves, and it did not mandate their full employment as it did for adult men and for unmarried adult women.9 However, the fact that it was different from other labor migrations does not mean it was not one. And crucially, married women’s classification as nonworking dependents was a legal fiction that did not square with the intentions of policymakers and resettlement officials, nor with the on-the-ground reality of resettlement once it emerged.

Rather than dependents, at all levels of the emerging resettlement bureaucracy— from those who wrote the law to the government and private agencies and individuals who administered it—that married women would be the uncompensated labor for the maintenance of their households was simply assumed. In both law and intention, married women were constructed as subordinate spouses who would properly labor in the private sphere but whose labors would not be acknowledged as such. In other words, this notion of women as nonworkers is inaccurate because they were expected to be unpaid workers, not nonworkers.10

8 94 Cong. Rec. 6568 (1948); Harzig, “MacNamara’s DP Domestics;” Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants”; Sj berg, The Powers and the Persecuted, 193–198; Harzig, “MacNamara’s DP Domestics”; Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War : Towards a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund Sweden: Lund University Press, 1991), 165–217.

9 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

10 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948).

247

Further exposing the legal fiction of married women as nonworkers, policymakers’ sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken assumption was that married women would also work outside of the home. The idea was that they would accompany their husbands to the location chosen for them by their sponsor and then promptly seek waged work. Indeed, volagencies frequently secured job assurances for married women and their teenage children, and as legislators had intended, those who were resettled in rural areas were generally assigned to jobs as supplemental farm labors or domestic workers, perhaps working as a maid for their spouse’s employer or as cook for male farmworkers. In urban areas, married women were sometimes placed in factory jobs, often in the textile industry, but there too, domestic service prevailed.11 The fact that DP women were expected to take jobs, despite the contradictory discourse otherwise reflects the extent to which domestic ideologies about women as nonworkers did not, neither in practice nor intention, apply to immigrants, poor women, and to women of color.

The implications of this history on how we understand refugee resettlement are significant. First, rather than an endeavor that treated married women as nonworkers, DP resettlement should be understood as a patriarchal labor migration. Not only did it admit and exclude DPs along patriarchal lines, but it established a sexist migratory framework that disadvantaged married women and amplified the discrimination that they would face in the job market. Because voluntary agencies were only required to locate employment for the male head of household, they almost universally prioritized men and located jobs for women only once they had secured positions for their husbands and only if they felt compelled to do so. Their tendency to place married women in low-wage, feminized

11 Ibid; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 254.

248 occupations also speaks to resettlement officials’ own sexism, as well as to their willingness to implement the program according to its patriarchal design. Limited by layers of sexism, by structural disincentives, and by the locale designated for the family as a result of their spouse’s job offer, married women’s job prospects took a back seat to their spouse’s. The fact these women were immigrants with limited English abilities and that the U.S. economy was deeply sex stratified resulted in their further disadvantage.12

Second, this history necessitates a rethinking of the relationship between resettlement’s familial structure and its economic imperatives. It is not enough to acknowledge that U.S. refugee policy treated DPs as members of families (familial subjects) in addition to treating them as workers (laboring subjects). Rather than incidental or extraneous to their construction as workers, their processing and distribution in family units was intimately tied up in it. In sculpting each family’s resettlement, volagencies invariably treated the whole family as an economic unit. Every member was conceptualized as an economic actor who would necessarily contribute unpaid household labor and/or cash wages to the household’s net income.13

Crucially, the economic utility of the familial labor unit exceeded the sum of its parts. A married couple with three teenage children, for example, represented more than five workers. Resettling DPs as family units was a labor management strategy. It helped to insure the permanence of DPs’ job assignments, and it provided employers with a flexible yet stable source of low-cost supplemental labor. On both accounts, the DP labor program’s familial structure met a distinct demand in the U.S. economy, especially for

12 Ibid.

13 This is vividly illustrated through Coppock’s approach to resettling the Kalmyks. See box 1, Series 4/1/6, BHLA.

249 rural employers. The fact that the DP program was structured to provide a long-term source of wage laborers was particularly attractive to farm employers at this historical moment when hundreds of thousands of American families continued to flee to urban areas. While Braceros, H-2 workers, and undocumented persons increasingly dominated the agricultural economy, their presence in the United States was less stable and was either dependent on the renewal of these programs or for the latter group, on their ability to avoid Operation Gatekeeper’s ever widening dragnet.14

The fact that married men’s wives and children would accompany them and work as supplemental agricultural and domestic laborers was even more crucial. Guest worker programs, in contrast, primarily recruited young adult men. Their family members— children, older persons, and female spouses and relatives—often accompanied them, entering the United States illegally and working alongside them as supplemental laborers or as so-called “wet” maids in nearby private homes. But these families faced the continual threat of deportation. In Mae Ngai’s words, the INS “worked extensively to track them down.” The DP labor migration afforded employers with a stable, state- sanctioned source of supplemental labor, which functioned to keep wages down and to enhance the flexibility of the agricultural workforce.15

To be sure, there were many ways in which the Bracero and H-2 Programs were far more attractive to rural employers. Guest workers’ wages were much lower, they were

14 Calavita, Inside the State.

15 Resettling DPs as family units was envisioned as a means of binding male agricultural workers to their jobs and to the regions where they were placed. The fact that DPs generally lacked not only friends and relatives in the U.S. but also basic language and cultural competencies contributed to employers’ sense that they would be a more permanent, tractable source of family-based labor in the rural economy. Hahamovitch, The Fruits of their Labor, 86; Hahamovitch, “The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State,” 143; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 151; The United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 56.

250 housed in barracks, and they were deported or relocated after the end of the growing season or if they protested the conditions of their labor.16 DPs, who were admitted as permanent residents and migrated in family units, nonetheless met a real demand in this rural economy by providing a stable source of low-cost feminized labor. That these workers were white also added to their appeal.17 The market for low-wage, white, and permanent family-based units of labor was different than that for contract laborers. Large ranches and agribusinesses, for example, had no intention of replacing legally vulnerable workers of color with European displaced persons. Nonetheless, there was a distinct, if smaller, niche market for DPs, and indeed, a substantial portion of employers who recruited DP laborers preferred married couples with children over unmarried men or women.

Ideological Labors

DPs’ distribution in family units performed important labor for the nation in other critical, yet more abstract ways. Resettling married men with their wives and children was seen as critical to ensuring their quick transformation from European refugees into functioning, assimilated Americans, both because the family structure was believed to facilitate male workers’ rootedness and because of the centrality of the heteropatriarchal nuclear family to American ideas about ideal citizen subjects. That married women were constructed as “housewives” did similar ideological work, as this was a moment in which women’s proper domestic comportment was central to constructions of whiteness, citizenship and the national identity. The on-the-ground reality that DP women were

16 Calavita, Inside the State.

17 Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims.”

251 steered into domestic work may have contradicted this vision of them as nonworkers but it reinforced the assimilatory logics embedded in that discourse. Immigrant women’s domestic work was believed to facilitate their own assimilation, as well as that of their families. As Grace Cheng explains, working in American households was seen as a means of learning “proper American values and work ethic,” which immigrants would then bring to their own households and “inculcate in their sons and daughters.” Notably, these values were ones that they were to acquire from their white American employers, not Americans of color, who were never considered as viable sponsors, and the fact that the DPs were European and were expected to assimilate into racial whiteness was central to the story of this prioritization of the family unit.18

DPs distribution in family units also provided a source of sentimental labor for white Americans. Christina Klein’s Cold War Orientalism provides insight into this function. As Klein explores, the post-World War II period was a time of immense social and psychic transformation for Americans, who gradually came to embrace a globalized vision of the American national identity and to retire mythologized ideas about U.S. isolationism. She suggests that sentimentalist narratives in middlebrow popular culture provided Americans an opportunity to work through these changing national identities and through the changing U.S. role in the world. Productions like The King and I, for example, reframed East-West relations through the lens of love, friendship, tutelage and cooperation. In doing so, it repackaged Western hegemony as friendship, and it offered up a powerful structure of feeling through which its millions of viewers were able to

18 Chang, Disposable Domestics, 99–101.

252 process—and on an emotional level, directly participate in—the U.S.’s changing role in the world.19

The act of resettling a refugee family offered a similar and even more potent opportunity. Most volagencies matched DP families with American sponsors, usually an individual family, an employer, or a local church group. Quite literally, their task was to assist refugee families in adjusting to their new lives. Local sponsors often secured housing and jobs for their families, but their deeper responsibility was broader. In welcoming DPs into their homes and hiring them on their farms or other places of business, sponsors were slated with the task of introducing DPs to American life—of

“lifting them up” from the ruins of war and the terror of Communism and giving them new life. While The King and I offered a powerful emotional narrative through which to process and participate in changing global relations, it did so at arm’s length. The opportunity to resettle a refugee family, on the other hand, provided an embodied, on-the- ground and interpersonalized structure of feeling. In befriending these destitute victims of

Nazism and Communism and turning them into healthy, happy Americans (in other words, in “saving” them), resettling DP families offered Americans a chance to process the dislocations of WWII and the Holocaust through the act of rescuing and resuscitating the human symbols of this violence. It was also an embodied, on-the-ground means of doing something about the perceived horrors of Soviet power and an opportunity to enact the emergent national sense of self as the world’s savior and as the morally sanct, rightful

“leader of the free world.”20

19 Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 2-18.

20 For example, New York Times, editorial, October 1, 1946; The Churchman, November 1, 1946.

253

The DP Act’s family structure offered an opportunity to think about resettlement not as an act of saving workers, but of saving families. As explored by Elaine Tyler May and others, mid-century America was marked by an unprecedented prioritization of nuclear family life, and these domestic fantasies were directly tied to Cold War anxieties.

In this context, the familial framework for refugee resettlement—that refugees migrated in family units and that American sponsors were often whole families, rather than individuals or institutions—amplified the psychic returns of “saving” refugees.21

Finally, DPs’ distribution in family units did real work for the idea that the U.S. resettlement project was a purely humanitarian endeavor. As Tydings’s and the DPC’s comments exemplify, the family structure was deployed in an attempt to cast the DP migration as something other than “a labor enterprise.” In reality, as this section has shown, the familial structure was tied up in rather than extraneous to—much less mutually exclusive of—this migration’s labor imperatives. Yet while policymakers’ discursive twists lacked grounding in reality, they were no less politically significant for that lapse. The moral work of this endeavor was well publicized and political salient. The family structure was not alone in buttressing this discourse, and the next section explores how DP admissions were cast a uniquely moral endeavor and how a host of factors combined to obfuscate the economic imperatives of this migration and to reinforce its moral veneer.

Part Two ~ The Political Economy of Morality and the Necessity of Obfuscation

The United States and humanity in general had “a moral obligation to take whatever emergency action may be necessary to provide refuge for at least some of the

21 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. (Basic Books, 2008).

254 displaced people of Europe.” Expressed here by an editorialist for the Trenton Times-

Advertiser, the notion that the act of admitting and resettling refugees was an inherently moral endeavor was deeply engrained in the American national common sense about this realm of policy. As Louisville Courier-Journal owner Barry Bingham remarked, the moral imperatives embedded in refugee resettlement were so deeply established that

“they hardly need recital.” Within this discourse, this realm of policy was elevated to a plane beyond the real politic and beyond the law itself. DP admissions were “actuated by an even higher law than the immigration law, the law of humanity,” said one lawmaker.22

Embedded in this discourse is the idea that certain moral questions and issues—in this case, what to do about refugees—transcend politics and stand outside of history itself. In reality, not only U.S. refugee policy, but the very insistence on understanding it as inherently moral was a product of politics and of the cultural and historical contexts of this post-World War II/early-Cold War moment. In fact, despite their general insistence on elevating the refugee issue to another plane, the very persons who were engaged in this discourse made comments that shed light on these very contexts. When the interlocutors in this conversation argued that “humanity is charged with changing these displaced persons into placed persons,” they sometimes seemed to suggest that this was the case not because of the sheer fact of their persecution nor the conditions of their current predicament, but because their suffering was a result of the Nazism and fascism specifically. Framed as “the casualties of an evil system and a terrible war … the wounded in a great battle for liberty,” DPs became embodied symbols of the ravages of

22 For “moral obligation,” Trenton Times-Advertiser, December 8, 1946; for “hardly need recital,” Barry Bingham, Louisville Courier-Journal, February 12, 1947; for “law of humanity,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 81 (1947).

255

World War II.23 Their continued suffering (in the words of an article in the Episcopalian journal The Churchman: the fact that “more than a year has passed since retribution fell on Hiroshima [and] almost a year and a half has elapsed since Berlin lowered Hitler’s flag, and still the displaced persons stand behind the gates of camps or wander hungry through the rubbled streets of Europe, without homes, without home, without effective help”) meant that the trauma of the war had not yet ended. Their existence was proof that

“human conscious [remained] off on holiday,” concluded this article and many others.

The opportunity to save refugees, on the other hand, offered a chance to close this chapter of history and to reclaim a sense that at the core of the human condition—or more specifically, the American condition—was an unflinching moral goodness.24

The psychic dividends of representing refugee policy in such stark moral terms were amplified by the moral uncertainties and dislocations created by life after

Hiroshima. “What a fantastic sort of a world we have gone into since the war,” commented Russell Smith of the American Farmers Union. “We say we are in the atomic age. We have just discovered the secret of the sun’s power. Yet we don’t know what to do with it. We are much more afraid of it than we are rejoiced about it.” For many, one solution lay in infusing the refugee issue with extraordinary moral significance—and then rushing in to become refugees’ saviors. While this psychic function of refugee resettlement was generally left unnamed, Smith put his finger on the dynamic. In the face of these moral uncertainties, “it seems to me that one thing we must do is remember that each one of these persons is a human being, and he is valuable. He is not just a

23 New York Times, editorial, October 1, 1946.

24 The Churchman, November 1, 1946.

256 problem…. [Resettling refugees] is one positive decision we can make and one firm step we can take in a period which is confusing and difficult.” In short and by Smith’s own admission, refugee resettlement offered Americans an opportunity to reassert a sense of pat moral certainty in the face of a world in which such clarity no longer seemed possible.25

Even more important than the post-Holocaust and Atomic contexts, the ideologically and morally charged Cold War contributed to Americans’ insistence on representing refugee policy as an inherently moral endeavor. In bringing “real freedom to those who have suffered most,” to quote a New York Times editorial, refugee resettlement offered an opportunity to spotlight Soviet abuses and to cast the United States as the symbol of “hope and freedom as opposed … [to the] brutality of Stalinism.”26 In other words, it was an opportunity to project an image of the United States as saving refugees while Communism creates them. It would “demonstrate the words we [Americans] preach about good will, charity, and brotherhood,” which would “increase[e] the prestige of the United States abroad,” emphasized a Providence Journal editorialist and William

Stratton respectively. The ideological victories implied by saving refugees were well understood by State Department officials, who repeatedly made this argument in their effort to impel Congress and the Truman administration to act on this issue, and it found

25 Ibid. And for quote, American Federation of Labor, “Should America Open its Doors to Displaced Persons?”, radio forum, America United (NBC, April 6, 1947), Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

26 For real freedom, New York Times, editorial, October 1, 1946; for “brutality of Stalinism,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 274 (1947) (statement of James F. Green, Chairman of the National Americanization Committee, American Legion).

257 particular receptiveness with Congressional conservatives who otherwise opposed immigration reform.27

This Cold War use of refugee resettlement to portray the United States as a uniquely moral world power was seeped in American exceptionalism and buttressed by sanitized narratives about the United States’ immigrant past. Prominent New York politician Herbert Lehman urged that “our responsibility before the world to these people is a special one.” This was the case, he and others argued, because “we are the inheritors and custodians of a continent dedicated to the service of human freedom. Those who subdued this continent and built America were all immigrants. Indeed, we are a nation of immigrants. It is immigrants who brought to this land the skills of their hands and brains to make of it a beacon of opportunity and hope for all men.” Not just because the United

States was a “nation of immigrants” (a phrase which had just come into fashion during the 1940s as the political cache of U.S. immigration history dramatically turned tides with World War II and the Cold War) and a “continent dedicated to the service of human freedom,” the interlocutors in this discourse argued that the United States had a “special claim to leadership and a special duty to ‘set an example’” because of its distinctly refugee past (because it “was built by refugees from foreign lands”) and because of the racial equanimity that allegedly resulted from this history (because it “represents so many blood strains and has amalgamated so many viewpoints”).28

27 Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 18-9; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 186; for Providence Journal, Providence Journal, editorial, February 14, 1947; for Stratton, American Federation of Labor, “Should America Open its Doors to Displaced Persons?”, radio forum, America United (NBC, April 6, 1947), Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

28 Tampa Bulletin, November 23, 1946; for “built by refugees,” Barry Bingham, Louisville Courier- Journal, February 12, 1947; and for Lehman, Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the 258

From mid-1946 when the CCDP and others began to push for a U.S. resettlement program to mid-1948 when the law was enacted, the Cold War had escalated considerably, and when lawmakers finally passed the Displaced Persons Act, a dramatic ideological battle had come to accompany the U.S. quest to assert itself as the predominant global hegemon and to reorganize the world system in its favor. In this context, international perceptions about the nation’s moral character came with real and unprecedentedly significant geopolitical and economic consequences. American policymakers unequivocally believed that the nation’s “standing in the world is at stake” in refugee policy and that the consequences of that standing would be dramatic. The opportunity to show that the United States rescues refugees and the Soviet Union creates them was a chance to underscore that the United States was the benevolent and rightful leader of the free world. Alternatively, not acting, or doing so in a way that seemed self- interested, threatened to give the Soviets “a powerful propaganda weapon” and to reinforce the sense that the United States’ “self-designation as the champion of the ‘free peoples … [was] a play for unbridled power,” emphasized witnesses during the

Congressional hearings around this law. In short, this was a historical moment in which the stakes were high in controlling the moral slant placed on U.S. refugee policy.29

Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 274 (1947) 383-6 (testimony of Hon. Herbert H. Lehman, National Community Relations Advisory Council and constituent organizations).

29 Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, press release, December 20, 1946, folder 5, box 294, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 268, 283, 382, (1947) (testimony of the Hon. Glenn Davis, Representative in Congress from the Second District of Wisconsin); Loescher and Scanlan, Calculated Kindness, 17-9; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 186; for “standing in the world is at stake,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 274 (1947) (testimony of the Hon. Glenn Davis, Representative in Congress from the Second District of Wisconsin); for “a play for ‘unbridled power,” Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 1947; for “powerful 259

The geopolitical and ideological stakes of resettlement’s framing had a foundational impact on how it could function as a labor migration. Policymakers understood that instituting a Bracero-type labor migration for DPs was entirely untenable, and any economic advantages accrued by superexploiting DPs would have been outweighed by the negative geopolitical ramifications. Their fears were not unsubstantiated. From the first debates about replacing the repatriation-oriented United

Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration with the resettlement-oriented IRO, the idea that the United States and other Western nations would treat refugees as a source of cheap labor was a prominent Soviet allegation, and the idea that refugees would be exploited economically seemed to trespass refugee policy’s moral pretenses. Within U.S. policy circles, there was a sense that policies that served U.S. economic or political interests were not necessarily less moral for that fact but, right or wrong, that this duality would be levied against U.S. credibility. As was feared during the crafting of the DP Act, the Soviet Union did indeed attempt to malign the United States for the economic imperatives embedded in its resettlement policy. In 1949, they brought a complaint to the

United Nations alleging that the United States treated DPs as “white slaves” and Soviet newspapers frequently suggested that DPs “are mainly used as [a] source of ‘cheap labor for agriculture, tending to replace Mexican, Puerto Rican and other agricultural workers in the US.” In short, as policymakers well knew and as was borne out several years later,

propaganda weapon,” Earl Harrison to Officers of the American Legion, July 24, 1947, folder 16, box 290, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

260 structuring resettlement to benefit local or national economic interests was a risky endeavor.30

Because opponents of U.S. hegemony promised to draw attention to resettlement’s economic bearings in order to call into question the morality of U.S. refugee policy and of U.S. global power more generally, the DP labor migration, in contrast to other mid-twentieth-century labor programs, was one whose economic functions were obfuscated by necessity. The need to mask this aspect of the resettlement policy makes sense of Tydings’s and the DPC’s eagerness to tout the familial structure as proof that U.S. policy was not “a recruitment project or a labor enterprise.” Moreover, the then-common sense association between a policy’s economic imperatives and its perceived morality helps to clarify their easy assumption that this policy’s alleged noneconomic bearings therefore proved its morality—in Tydings’ words, that it was thus

“a purely humanitarian” endeavor.” Unsurprisingly, this migration’s familial structure was not the only element that functioned to obscure its economic functions. The legal bearings of this obfuscated labor migration ran deep, and we next explore several other elements of the DP law that had a similar impact.

Structures of Obfuscation

One source of legal obfuscation emerged from legislators’ omission of many details about this labor migration. The laws creating the nation’s contract labor programs—the Bracero and H-2 Programs, for example—directly specified the terms of guest workers’ recruitment, distribution and employment, as well as their wage rates, what rights they had (and did not have) as workers, and even what to do if they died on

30 Sj berg, The Powers and the Persecuted, 193; quote from Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims” 235.

261 the job.31 The Displaced Persons Act, on the other hand, did not even directly refer to

DPs as workers, and with the curious exception of section five’s suspension of the contract labor clause, it contained few detailed regulations. Legislators were able to sidestep these particulars by charging the DPC with the task of writing the law’s regulations. If DPs quit their jobs, could they be deported? Would DPs be allowed to join unions? Did sponsoring employers have an enforceable legal responsibility to provide housing and prevent DPs from becoming public charges, or just a moral one? How would the government enforce the mandate that these workers would be properly distributed?

These and other labor-related questions were answered by a government agency (the

DPC) and buried in the Federal Register months after its passage, rather than included in the law itself.32

In this sense, the DP Act was indicative of the state of mid-twentieth-century U.S. immigration law and of the laws surrounding church/state collaboration abroad. Both realms of policy were marked by inordinate influence given to administrative decision, and historians have characterized them as legal realms in which the law was created not by its letter but by regulations and by on-the-ground practice. For the former, this dates most starkly to the implementation of Chinese exclusion, as has been fleshed out by Erika

Lee, Lucy Salyer and other legal historians of Chinese immigration, and for the latter, to

31 Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, Pub. L. No. 78-45 (1943).

32 The answers to these questions were 1) no, not just on those grounds, but quitting often created other conditions (i.e. poverty) which could lead to deportation; 2) yes, but sponsors should discourage it; 3) no, sponsors’ obligations were moral rather than legal; and 4) through the careful collaboration of private and public agencies. Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

262 the rapid escalation of federal collaboration with religious groups abroad during World

War II, as detailed by Bruce Nichols.33

The integration of the jobs mandate into the assurance system was an important component of the law’s sidestepping of this Act’s labor imperatives. The DP Act did not even contain an explicit standalone work requirement, just 2(c)3’s promise to refugees that humanitarian agencies would find them jobs. Dressed up as a guarantee of employment rather than a work requirement, the jobs mandate appeared to be something other than what it was. Incorporated into the assurance system, the work requirement was repackaged as an act of kindness on the part of volagencies and the U.S. government: rather than simply drop refugees into a foreign environment, the U.S. government, in partnership with American churches and charities, was committed to easing their transition into their new lives, literally “assuring” them jobs. In certain contexts—for example, behind closed doors and in conversations with organizations concerned about refugees’ impact on unemployment—policymakers acknowledged that the purpose of this clause was to mandate their full employment, and as a result, the DP migration would operate as a migration of laborers to the United States. Yet in the language of the law and in the spin that surrounded it, the jobs requirement appeared to be less of a contract labor system than a promise of help, a gift even.34

The assurance system put in place by 2(c)3 also masked this state-sponsored labor migration because it relegated its implementation to private agencies, which enabled the

33 Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2003); J. Bruce Nichols, The Uneasy Alliance: Religion, Refugee Work, and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

34 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948).

263 migration to proceed without full federal financial backing and without extensive visible involvement by government agencies. The Displaced Persons Act provided financial allocations for approximately two dozen DPC employees, the majority of whom by necessity were assigned to processing refugee claimants in Europe, rather than to administering their resettlement in the United States. In contrast, there were thousands of salaried resettlement workers employed by private U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, and because the majority of volagencies relied on volunteers for their on- the-ground operations, there were over a hundred thousand unpaid workers. As a result, this program was implemented at an astonishingly low cost—only $87 per refugee—and for every government resettler there were at least a hundred privately salaried workers and several thousand volunteers.35

On face value, government involvement in DP resettlement appeared to be particularly minimal precisely in respect to this specific, hot button aspect of the resettlement program. The role of privately employed and unpaid workers, the DPC commissioners admitted unequivocally, was “to make the program work.” They found jobs for DP workers, distributed them throughout the country, urged them to remain in their initial placements, and intervened if disagreements arose (and generally, on the behalf of employers, rather than as DPs’ advocates). The DPC, in contrast, functioned more as a self-described “instrumental liaison,” a coordinating force that wrote the regulations, performed some perfunctory supervisory tasks and sometimes intervened when significant problems arose but was otherwise almost entirely absent in the nuts and

35 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 58, 293.

264 bolts of finding jobs for DP workers and in these other tasks that clearly marked resettlement as a labor migration.36

In part, the DPC was absent from the daily mechanics of this labor migration because of financial and administrative constraints. Resources permitting, the agency would have likely been more involved. However, the fact that it was volagencies and other private groups—not government agencies—that were most involved in this aspect of resettlement was also a product of the assurance system. By mandating job placements through an agency-backed assurance, the Displaced Persons Act deputized these agencies as the state-sanctioned procurers of jobs. Their task was to locate jobs and to enforce the terms of employment. In its final report to Congress, the DPC explained that the assurances were the “life blood of the program—no assurance, no DP.”37 In order to bring about the 202,000 migrations permitted under the law (later increased to 400,000), resettlers needed to secure as many jobs, matching each with a DP who had appropriate skills and experience.

Because volagencies, not the DPC or another government agency, were the padrones in this labor migration, the effort to treat DPs as workers, if acknowledged at all, appeared to be the choice of private humanitarian agencies, not federal agencies and certainly not those who oversaw other im/migrant labor programs. Yet even here, despite these distinct departures from the Bracero and H-2 programs, these labor migrations were intimately connected. Not only did a federal agency (the DPC) work behind the scenes to ensure that volagencies conformed to the program’s labor imperatives, but at the DPC’s

36 Ibid,182, 187-8.

37 Ibid.

265 urging, most volagencies worked in tandem with the local United States Employment

Agencies and Farm Placement Service branches that implemented the contract labor programs. The USES, which had 1800 offices throughout the nation and thousands of workers on the ground, helped volagencies in various ways: They gathered information about local economic conditions and job availabilities and provided volagencies with a clearinghouse of available jobs. They talked with prospective employers about DPs and coordinated with state-level government agencies to plan each state’s economic plan for this migration. They audited volagencies’ assurances to ensure that the chosen DP had the appropriate skills for the assigned jobs and that their placement would not displace

Americans. They trained volagencies in the science of selecting workers for jobs. They counseled DPs who hoped to switch jobs, generally urging them to stay with their original employer, and in the case that a DP became unemployed, they provided him or her with information about local employment services. This collaboration was neither officially mandated nor widely acknowledged, and it was generally cast as assistance to a local charity or church rather than as a systematic part of the DP labor migration.38 Not coincidently, the Bracero and H-2 Programs also became increasingly privatized the late

38 Calavita, Inside the State, 117; William Connolly, “Minimum Labor Standards in the Resettlement Program,” in Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 42; Hurt, The Great Plains during World War II, 205–6; Paul Kepner, “Possible Contributions of the Cooperative Extension Service to the Displaced Persons Commission,” in Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 22–4; “Facilities of the United States Employment Service and Its Affiliated State Employment Services Which Could Be Utilized in the Program of the Displaced Persons Commission”, n.d., Gov. Depts. – Federal Works Agency, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; A.W. Motley, “The Facilities Available to Cooperating Agencies Through the Employment Services,” in Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference; Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner and Mr. P. V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, January 28, 1949, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 314; Aaron Zempel, Executive Director, “Action Taken to Give Effect to the Conclusions of the Preliminary Migration Conference”, May 2, 1951, Government Departments – Department of Labor, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

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1940s, creating a second connection between the two. For the guest worker programs, private employer groups, rather than religious agencies, took over the direct, official processing of workers, but like the DP Program, government agencies continued to provide critical support for these labor migrations.39

Part Three ~ Religious Formations

The use of private groups buttressed this migration’s credibility as a humanitarian act not just because these groups enabled such negligible state involvement in its labor placement aspects but because the majority of these organizations were religious groups.

Religious volagencies resettled the majority of all refugees, and together, the four largest—the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), Church World Service

(CWS), the National Lutheran Council (NLC) and the Jewish organization United

Service for New Americans (USNA)—resettled more than two thirds of all refugees.40

These volagencies, especially the Christian groups, portrayed DP admissions and resettlement not simply as a non-economic project and not simply as a moral endeavor, but as a distinctly religious endeavor, and more specifically, as a Christian endeavor.

Christian volagencies prominence as refugees’ beneficent resettlers reinforced this projection. As this section explores, the idea that admitting and resettling refugees was an act of Christian faith—both on the part of the nation and on the part of the groups involved in the project—was widely accepted. As such, resettlement functioned as a site of religious formation: groups used it to tell a public story about their faith and how it functioned in the world, as well as about the nation’s Christian core. It was also site of

39 Calavita, Inside the State; Flynn, The Mess in Washington, 9.

40 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107.

267 religious formation in more concrete, material ways. Denominational groups used it to win converts and strengthen existing church communities, and it functioned to infuse religious organizations with financial capital, social relevance, and political clout.

CWS, NLC and NCWC each had extensive publicity departments that were dedicated to extolling the Christian bearings of resettlement. They did so in publications small and large, secular and religious; in mailings and brochures sent to local denominations; and even in professionally produced radio programs and films. The messages imparted by Church World Service’s radio broadcast Let There Be Light are indicative of how Christian volagencies portrayed themselves. This series, which spotlighted CWS’s involvement in refugee resettlement, as well as other national and international service projects, repeatedly emphasized that the story of Christians helping refugees is the story of “what men and women all over the world are doing, doing because they believe in the teachings of Christianity.” It is the story of “the church … in action” (the ellipses are theirs and were in the written transcript to denote the dramatic pause in the spoken version).41 The episodes portrayed refugees as kind, caring, self- sacrificing, hardworking, grateful, and most of all, as Christians and anti-communists.

However, these episodes focused more on their American resettlers, than on the refugees themselves. They recounted dramatic scenes of Christians who helped DPs make new lives in America and who did so out of their own generosity and because of their

Christian ideals. Episode number 184 told the story of a twelve-year-old boy who escaped with his grandparents from a Soviet labor camp and was resettled in New Haven, which he first believed was pronounced “New Heaven” and which he eventually

41 Let There Be Light, radio program, written by Mary Kemper Gunn, produced by John M. Gunn (Church World Service) Box 115, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

268 concluded was indeed a veritable “new heaven” because of the generosity of Christian

Americans and the near heavenly bliss of American life.42 Another broadcast told the story of how a particularly attentive congregation rescued a DP couple who was being exploited as unpaid servants but who were so grateful for a chance to live in America that they endured their servitude without complaint. Crucially, while their Christian American rescuers went to impressive lengths to remove them from this exploitative arrangement and to tend to their emotional well-being, the new job that they found for this well- educated DP couple was again as servants, simply with kinder employers, hence creating a moral tale in which serving Americans was a form of salvation for DPs, just as long as the Americans were kind.43 Another episode, which told the story of fourteen-year-old orphan Helga concluded that for DPs, resettlement is the act of “lifting them out of miserable existence and offering them a chance to live, work and worship as human beings,” and for Christian Americans, it is an opportunity to “lessen the misery of your fellow man” while keeping “liberty’s lamp burning brightly.”44

As one pastor explained to Lutheran congregations throughout the upper

Midwest, resettlement was an “opportunity [to] show that our faith is more than words.”45

While Christian volagencies like LRS and CWS were clearly invested in making a public show of this point, resettlement was also an opportunity to show ones Christianity to oneself. In other words, Christian resettlers did not simply portray resettlement as a

42 Mary Kemper Gunn, “New Heaven,” radio program, produced by John M. Gunn Let There Be Light no. 174 (Church World Service, February 14, 1955) Box 115, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

43 Mary Kemper, “File # 1783” radio program, produced by John M. Gunn Let There Be Light no. 125 (Church World Service, March 8, 1954) Box 115, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

44 You Wanted to Know,” Box 116, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

45 Solberg, Open Doors, 45.

269 distinctly religious project, but they legitimately understood it as such. It was a site of religious formation on a personal level as well. As Richard Solberg unveils in his exploration of the Lutheran refugee program, Christian volagencies, parishes and individual sponsors experienced the act of resettling refugees as an act of their faith, as an enactment of what it meant to be Christian in the world, and as a challenge to find the love of God within them. As a result, Solberg concludes, the process was transformative for American Christians. “It dug into the heart and soul of the character of the church in every community.”46

Christian resettlers drew on Biblical teachings about Christ’s generosity to the meek, to strangers, and to the hungry in order to understand their actions, and in doing so, they turned the act of resettlement into an opportunity to enact their own Christliness.

Quite overtly, it was an act of “minister[ing] to the needs of men in the spirit of Jesus,” explained a 1952 Church World Service policy statement.47 Through this logic, saving refugees from their bleak futures was the ultimate Christian act, and in helping DPs, resettlers became Christ-like. They modeled their actions off of Christ’s feeding of clothing of the hungry, his welcoming of outcasts, and his generosity toward strangers, and they believed that their good deeds offered an opportunity to “follow Him” and find the Christ inside them.48

46 Ibid.

47 Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

48 Harold Groves, “Settling an Old Debt,” guest editorial, Wisconsin State Journal, May 4, 1947; Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

270

The idea that resettling refugees was a religious endeavor with a distinctly

Christian core was affirmed by lawmakers and the general public, not just by religious organizations and individuals. Congressperson Glenn Davis from Wisconsin explained that a dominant theme in advocacy discourse was not just that Americans should resettle refugees as a testament to the fact that they are “a human people” but because the United

States is “a Christian nation.”49 “The DP problem offers the victorious Western World— and the United States especially—an opportunity to prove its faith in Christian brotherhood,” wrote an editorialist for the Salisbury Evening Post. “Can we as a Nation which professes to follow the principles of Christianity … refuse to accept our share of those who gave so much in the fight against the totalitarians?,” added a writer for the

Capital Times.50 It was the nation’s “Christian duty” remarked another unequivocally.

Doing so would make the United States “first in winning the commendation: ‘I was a stranger, and ye took me in,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor.51

Official government publications also echoed this framing, further reinforcing the message that resettlement was proof not just of resettlers’ Christianity, but the Christian core of the whole nation. A March, 1947 poem printed in United States News, a military magazine, cast refugee resettlement as a religious test of the state’s Christian bearings and an opportunity for the nation to “open her heart.” Resettling refugees would mean that the American people would one day be able to stand before “our Maker” as

49 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 274 (1947) (testimony of the Hon. Glenn Davis, Representative in Congress from the Second District of Wisconsin).

50 Capital Times, June 45, 1947; Salisbury North Carolina Evening Post, February 24, 1947.

51 For “Christian duty,” The Churchman, October 1, 1946; for “stranger,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 1947.

271

Christians who followed God’s teachings, the poem suggested.52 The Christian core of

U.S. resettlement also figured prominently the Marshall Plan Film Corps and USIA propaganda films about the Kalmyks. In both One, Two, Three and The Haven, the

Kalmyks’ Christian resettlers were cast as their devoted saviors who rescued the Kalmyks from hopelessness and who tended to them with open-minded devotion as they helped them build new lives in the United States. Both films follow a similar narrative arc: the

Kalmyks survived Nazi aggression and ethnic cleansing by Soviet communists only to be indefinitely stranded in European DP camps, abandoned by the world due to racism. The forward-thinking United States swoops in as their rescuers, and their helpful, beneficent

Christian sponsors and allies help sculpt them into hardworking, happy, freedom-loving

Buddhist Americans.53

For Christian volagencies, resettling refugees was a religious endeavor in an even deeper sense. As a CWS policy statement suggested, resettlement was not just an act of

Christian deed, but an act of “Christian Witness, by DEED” (their capitalization). In other words, many resettlers hoped to save refugees twice: from their dire straits and from damnation. Like other service-related programs conducted by CWS, a “cardinal principle” of their refugee program was to make it “so closely geared into the existing missionary program as to present an integrated witness,” explained Wynn Fairfield the

Executive Director of CWS and a former Congregational missionary to China. In public

52 David Lawrence, The United States News, March 7, 1947.

53 John Ferno, “Kalmucks,” Magazine No. 3, Directed by Nelo Risi, 1952 (Mutual Security Agency/Europe, Paris, 1952), 35 mm film, NACP; “The Haven, Original Production, Produced by Thomas Craven Film Corp.,” Foreign Versions, August 18, 1954, The Haven – English, Series: Movie Scripts, 1942-1965, Records of the U.S. Information Agency, 1900-1992, RG 306, NACP; Thomas Craven Film Corp., The Haven (United States Information Agency, 1954), 35mm filmstrip, 1452 ft, Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division, NACP, posted at http://khalmig.org/.

272 statements, CWS emphasized that “witness through service should be aimed primarily at the relief of need and not regarded as a means of winning the recipients to Christ” (their underlining). The growth of the Church “in the communities where it ministers” was simply a natural outcome. “Because such service is given in the spirit of Christ, it often leads men to know and love Him,” this statement explained. Behind the scenes, however,

CWS was more candid. Service was “a way of getting people to listen to their preaching and teaching,” Fairfield noted in an internal report.54

Not only was service work envisioned as mission work-in-disguise, but its institutional and ideological roots expose it as such. CWS itself had its institutional and ideological origins in domestic and international missions, as did the other Protestant and

Catholic volagencies and the majority of CWS’s twenty-one denominational subsidiaries, from Baptist World Relief to the Protestant Episcopal Church. The history of CWS’s shift from overt mission work toward service-oriented projects exposes the depth and complexity of resettlement’s implication in denominational attempts to grow their faith both numerically and institutionally. During this post-World War II moment, overt missions experienced declining popularity among CWS’s affiliates and its parent organization, the Federal Council of Churches. These groups sought to distance themselves from the type of evangelizing promoted by Billy Graham and other popular evangelists. CWS’s main financial backers, who CWS officials sometimes referred to as their “constituency,” came from these sources, and they were increasingly interested in growing the church through service, rather than explicit missions—or at least repacking

54 Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; “Some Basic Principles of Church World Service,” draft statement, October 28, 1954, 2, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; and on mission work in china, Gerhard Hennes, The Little Gray Notebook (Author House, 2009), 123.

273 mission work as service. So, too, were the young Christians who CWS hoped to recruit as volunteers. There “are quite a few Christian youth today who feel that they should do something to meet the world’s needs…. They seek outlets in Service which they cannot find [in traditional mission work].” “Witness by DEED,” in other words, garnered more financial backing, institutional support and volunteers than did missions that were focused on witnessing alone, and refugee resettlement was a product of this new organizational strategy (their capitalization).55

Not just a strategic move for CWS as an organization, CWS believed that a focus on service—both in general and for refugee specifically—would strengthen existing

Christian communities. Integrating service into traditional missions would “lift the economic level of the Christian community so the church could become self-supporting,” explained Fairfield. Instead of simply ministering to refugees and other destitute persons in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, helping them to become self-sufficient would facilitate the stability and viability of the Church.56 The opportunity to bring DPs to the United

States served a similar purpose for American communities: it would infuse American

Christians with a sense of mission, infuse their churches with new members, and

55 W. Carl Bogard, President and Dougal E. Young, Secretary, “Resolution Offered at the Regular Monthly Meeting of the Butler County Protestant Churches,” June 23, 1947, in Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 309-310 (1947); Church World Service: A Historical Note,” NCC Information Service Newsletter, October 17, 1959, 8, Box 114, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

56 Wynn Fairfield, “Memorandum on Problems of Christian ‘Service’ Overseas,” April 11, 1952, 3, Box 80, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS.

274 potentially create political connections that might enhance Christians’ influence over future immigration policies.57

In this moment of heightened interfaith rivalry, the opportunity to use resettlement as a means to grow their denominations and to gain political clout was alluring. Failing to participate in this program, on the other hand, would mean more than a missed opportunity. It would mean that other denominations and faiths would use resettlement to differentially grow their own churches and to increase their own influence with the federal government. Anti-Semitism played a large role in this fear and by extension, in many Protestant and Catholic volagencies’ decisions to participate in the program. As

Haim Genizi documents, Protestant and Catholic volagencies made the decision to support DP admissions only once they realized that a majority of DPs were Christians, not Jews, and they did so in large part in order to ensure that admissions numbers would reflect this distribution. After the passage of the law, CWS in particular was slow to act due to disorganization and a lack of clear commitment on both an institutional and congregational level. However, in mid-1949, they stepped up their resettlement efforts in order to ensure that adequate numbers of Protestants entered the United States and that the migration would not be dominated by Jews and Catholics.

The Economic Function of the Religious Structure

As explored above, Christian volagencies’ involvement in resettlement illustrates how this endeavor was envisioned as a religious project, by which I mean a church building project and a project with religious meaning. These religious formations had a crucial impact on the way that it was able to function economically and in respect to the

57 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107; Genizi, America’s Fair Share; Solberg, Open Doors, 45.

275 policy’s other aims. This was the case for a number of reasons, and this section outlines some of the more prominent connections between the Displaced Persons Act’s religious formations and its economic imperatives.

Most patently, its religious formations were connected to its economic imperatives because these formations, perhaps more than any other factor, buttressed the obfuscation of the policy’s economic imperatives. The religious meaning that infused this project—in other words, its religious veneer—solidified the social common sense that this realm of policy, despite its multiplicity of aims, nonetheless had at its essential core an inherent, irrefutable morality. Complementarily, its religious structure—the fact that resettlement was implemented almost entirely by religious institutions, communities and individuals—reinforced this construction because the centrality of these religious actors appeared as veritable proof that this project was a moral endeavor.

The psychological and material returns that resettlement offered to religious organizations and individuals led to another important impact: it created an almost unlimited supply of resettlement workers, which was crucial given the legal structure of this migration. The nature of the jobs program, especially the need to match each refugee with a job and housing before he or she arrived, necessitated a massive resettlement infrastructure, an infrastructure that geopolitical realities prohibited. And the fact of the public charge mandate—that for every family admitted, there must be an American who would pledge to insure that these persons (persons they had never met, knew little about and likely did not share a common language with) would never need to seek public assistance—required a tremendous commitment not just from organizations, but from hundreds of thousands of everyday people. The moralization of resettlement and its

276 capacity to function as a site of religious formation for both organizations and individuals created precisely what was needed to accomplish these tasks: a massive network of organizations and individuals willing to embark upon this task without sufficient additional outside incentives (i.e. full federal support or funding).58

Not only did religious individuals and organizations provide this crucial labor and infrastructure for refugees’ resettlement in the United States, but they did so without compensation. That is, the United States obtained and relied on the unpaid labor of individuals who were motivated to participate because of their sense that endeavor was a uniquely moral, Christian task. As such, these workers—and resettling refugees was indeed work—can best be understood as religious or moral laborers. This formulation calls attention to the fact that the services these individuals provided for the state constituted work, and it emphasizes the crucial fact that these laborers were free precisely because of this project’s religio-moral veneer and returns. In doing so, this formulation decenters the moral notions that still color most treatments of resettlement, and it sheds light on another layer of the labor history of U.S. resettlement: that this was an endeavor that not only treated refugees as workers but relied on the free labor of religious

Americans in order bring this about.

Not an unacknowledged or unexpected attribute of the program, the use of moral laborers as this labor program’s explicit yet invisible padrones was a well-formulated policy move. In fact, religious groups had offered themselves up for this task, and their

58 W. Carl Bogard, President and Dougal E. Young, Secretary, “Resolution Offered at the Regular Monthly Meeting of the Butler County Protestant Churches,” June 23, 1947, in Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 309-310 (1947); Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 120; Hahamovitch, “Creating Perfect Immigrants,” 84; Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 14-5, 27-8; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 57-8, 159, 187-8, 294.

277 promise that they could accomplish it with ease was a necessary condition for the law’s passage. Leaders from individual volagencies testified to this point, and the head of the

American Council on Voluntary Agencies claimed without hesitation that the commitment of his agencies meant that he could “say with confidence that resettlement of 100,000 per annum … can be accomplished.”59 Private conversations between the INS and State Department revealed that officials had an unquestioned faith that this would be the case.60 And indeed it was. Upon its completion, government reports concluded

“without the voluntary agencies, there would have never been a displaced persons program to begin with. Without their continuous and active participation, the program would never have been able to succeed.” Without them, the DP program “would fall flat on its face,” wrote one DPC commissioner bluntly.61

More than just a source of low cost, willing laborers, the reliance on religious volagencies offered another distinct benefit for the DP labor migration. It tapped into access to what was mid-century America’s most well-coordinated social institution, a social institution that was both centrally organized and locally rooted: churches. Each major religion and denomination that participated in the DP resettlement program had access to a vast, already existent on-the-ground network of local congregations and regional religious organizations. Churches and synagogues pervaded nearly every

American locale, from the largest urban areas to the most isolated nook-and-cranny of the

59 94 Cong. Rec. 6574-5 (1948); Cecil Holland, editorial, Chicago Sun, March 14, 1947; “Who’s Going to Board Uncle Jake,” Philadelphia Sunday Evening Bulletin, June 22, 1947.

60 94 Cong. Rec. 6574 (1948); 94 Cong. Rec. 7794 (1948); Ugo Carusi to The Secretary of State, “Outline of Plans to Implement Legislation Which May Be Enacted to Permit the Immigration of Displaced Persons to the United States;” January 16, 1948, Gov. Depts. – State Dept., Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

61 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 57-8.

278 nation, and volagencies were already connected through hierarchical institutional channels to the vast majority of these communities. As such, rather than resettling refugees directly, the majority of religious volagencies were able to recruit local churches and synagogues for the task.62

The utility of these connections were made clear even before the passage of the

Displaced Persons Act. Religious volagencies had illustrated their ability to nationally coordinate and locally administer a government-sanctioned resettlement program during the years spent resettling persons who entered the United States through the Truman

Directive, through their involvement in the post-internment resettlement of Japanese

Americans, and through their preparations for this migration. An example from the latter demonstrates the benefits offered by utilizing a social institution with such broad reach.

In 1947, the Minnesota Displaced Persons Commission set out to survey the entire state for specific employment, housing, and sponsorship opportunities. While they collected some data by coordinating with local welfare boards and while they met a few potential sponsors as a result of placing ads in local newspapers, by and large, they were able to accomplish this unprecedentedly thorough endeavor by partnering with local churches.

With the help of over 3,000 clergy members, the Minnesota DPC reportedly reached every single community in the state.63

The use of religious institutions as refugees’ resettlers not only facilitated broad- level coordinated action, but also proved particularly strategic in respect to the goal of prioritizing rural placements and dispersing refugees broadly. While most nonsectarian

62 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 120; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 293.

63 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 295; Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 18.

279 welfare organizations were concentrated in urban areas, the use of churches as welfare agencies facilitated refugees’ rural placements. The CCDP advertised religious volagencies as the key which would guarantee refugees’ dispersal. Senator Alexander

Smith explained this logic: “The various parishes and [religious] communities all over the

United States [were a means to] see that they are dispersed throughout the United States

… [not] congested in the big urban centers at the seacoast.”64

It was not simply that religious organizations extended into rural communities, but that many denominations and faiths had organizations specifically devoted toward encouraging rural living. At this time, the National Catholic Rural Life Conference was in the midst of a back-to-the-land movement that focused on securing rural jobs for unemployed Catholics and on offering religious and economic support for rural Catholic communities. This organization was particularly vocal in advocating for DP admissions: they gathered advanced pledges from priests in local areas, certified the support of bishops in charge of rural Catholic life, and offered themselves up as the guardian of this imperative to mandate refugees’ rural placements.65 These religious groups not only

64 94 Cong. Rec. 6402 (1948); “YES, says the American Federation of Labor,” pamphlet, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; “Statement on Displaced Persons Adopted by the Executive Committee of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference at a Meeting Held in Des Moines, Iowa, April 16, 1947,” clipping, folder 11, box 297, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 190 (1947) (testimony of Bishop William T. Mulloy, President of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference); Earl Harrison to Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce, November 3, 1947, folder 32, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 57-8; Ugo Carusi to The Secretary of State, “Outline of Plans to Implement Legislation Which May Be Enacted to Permit the Immigration of Displaced Persons to the United States”, January 16, 1948, Gov. Depts. – State Dept., Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

65 Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 190 (1947) (testimony of Bishop William T. Mulloy, President of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 279. For an important historical context on how rural living organizations had their origins in attempts to break up immigrant communities 280 promised to insure DPs’ dispersal, but actually followed through in practice. A government report concluded that a “highly important, result of the submission of assurances by voluntary agencies was a much broader base of geographic distribution than would have otherwise happened, owing to their widespread networks of local, affiliated, and associated organizations.”66

There is also some evidence that the use of church networks may have been particularly strategic in respect to the goal of funneling DPs into the agricultural and domestic labor forces. At the very least, churches were imagined to serve these ends.

“Churches are the best way of reaching farmers,” explained one representative of the

Farm Bureau, who was also a consultant for the United Fruit Company. This was the case, he speculated, because “farmers are often religious.” Church-based sponsorships were also conducive to placements in the domestic labor force, and many church communities placed the sponsored families in the homes of their parishioners.67

Relying so heavily on religious volagencies was also an attempt to compel DPs’ assimilation. Policymakers’ logic was that sponsorship by a local church would provide refugees with an acceptable gateway into the local community life. Rather than allowing them to find community with their co-ethnics or with other immigrants, the goal was to

“integrate them into the life of established congregations,” in the words of a LRS policy statement.68 In addition to preempting ethnic community formation, church sponsorships

in urban areas, Jack Glazier, Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants Across America (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1998).

66 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 168; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 279.

67 Charlotte Abbott to Helen Shuford, “Fairfield Report,” folder 16, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

68 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 153-4.

281 were also thought to facilitate DPs’ assimilation because churches were well-suited to find not only employers and landlords, but also volunteers who would help these newcomers learn the ropes of American culture. Indeed, most religious sponsors believed that their task was to do more than provide material support, but to help assimilate refugees into American life. Finally, policymakers and religious resettlers alike seemed to believe that there was a direct connection between Christianity and Americanness. In the mainstream nationalist imaginary, Christianity was both a requirement for national belonging and a pathway to it. In other words, rootedness in Christianity led to rootedness in the nation. Christian resettlers viewed the divinely-mandated and state-sanctioned task of resettlement as one in which they would simultaneously Americanize and Christianize refugees, as these processes were interconnected. In the words of a CWS pamphlet, the goal was “to help displaced persons become Christian citizens.”69

Volagencies’ surveillance of refugees’ comportment in the United States was not only focused on social behaviors, but on their laboring practices, and the use of religious volagencies was believed to be particularly beneficial for this ends as well. In lieu of creating an extensive new immigrant surveillance and assimilation program, the INS relied on religious volagencies’ extensive connections to monitor DPs’ laboring practices.

As a government report explained, “if follow-up on individual cases were to be made in the United States, at every step along the line of action from debarkation to settlement, the major effort would have to be undertaken by voluntary agencies and other non-federal government organizations cooperating in the program.”70 Under section eight of the

69 You Wanted to Know,” Box 116, Series VIII, NCC, RG 8, PHS; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report.

70 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 57.

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Displaced Persons Act, refugees were required to report their whereabouts and place of employment to their volagencies every six months, and these volagencies would then relay this information to the INS. Persons who failed to report this information would be subject to deportation, and government records suggest that the INS carefully followed up on delinquent DPs.71 In the end, volagencies’ surveillance of DP workers extended beyond this legal mandate. Pressured by both the DPC and by unhappy employers, religious volagencies and local churches went out of their way to ensure that refugees would stay at their initial job assignments for a substantial period of time. “Everything must be done to eliminate the movement of DPs from their original sponsors

[employers],” concluded the National Catholic Resettlement Council, which worked closely with the official Catholic volagency, the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

In conjunction with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, these organizations created a propaganda campaign aimed at reducing attrition, and they began to give new arrivals written contracts in which DPs promised to stay at their assigned jobs for at least a year. LRS took a similarly extensive approach. Both volagencies asked local clergy and parishioners to visit DPs’ homes frequently and to urge them to attend church, as helping them to grow roots in the local community was seen as a deterrent to labor force attrition.72

Finally, the use of Christian volagencies was a means of insuring that relatively few Jews or communists would enter the United States through this Act. As Reverend

Samuel McCrea Cavert of the Federal Council of Churches explained, one purpose of

71 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 15.

72 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 123-4, 181-2, quote on 182.

283 using Christian groups as resettlers was to guard against the possibility that this law would be exploited by Jewish groups to differentially benefit Jewish DPs.73 As Rhode

Island Senator Howard McGrath noted, another purpose was to guard against the entry of communists: “Church leaders are not communists, and they are not interested in bringing communists to our country.”74 Christian volagencies’ preference for Christians was also thought to have a built-in effect of screening out communists, as many Americans believed that the majority of communists were Jews. In contrast, Christian DPs were believed to be “violently anticommunistic and violently Christian,” in the words of

McGrath, who meant this as a compliment.75

Volagencies had wide latitude over who they chose to admit, and while the DPC’s legal division eventually concluded that it was illegal for government agencies to afford preferential treatment to any specific religious group, no such restrictions were placed on volagencies. In fact, each religious volagency chose to limit their program to persons who belonged to their faith or denomination. The National Lutheran Council only selected

Lutherans, the National Catholic Welfare Conference only selected Catholics, United

Service for New Americans only selected Jews, and so forth. (CWS made an exception for the Kalmyks.) This system enabled individuals—and in some cases, entire regions— to discriminate against specific religious groups, generally Jews. Employers who hoped to recruit persons of a specific ethnicity or religious background were simply directed to the appropriate volagency. State leaders who hoped to prevent Jews from migrating to

73 For “productive workers,” Permitting Admission of 400,000 Displaced Persons into the United States: Hearings on H.R. 2910, Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, 80th Cong. 27 (1947) (testimony of Reverend Samuel McCrea Cavert).

74 94 Cong. Rec. 6580 (1948).

75 Ibid.

284 their state could do so by preferentially building partnerships with Christian volagencies.

The U.S. DPC was complicit in this process. When employers wrote them asking for a non-Jewish DP and when state leaders inquired about the same, they explained this strategy. Yet outwardly and in the letter of the law, they appeared unbiased: after a lengthy debate and dissent from one Commissioner who advocated for a more explicitly discriminatory system, the agency decided that the official assurance forms should not allow sponsors to denote a religious or ethnic preference. The result was a system of de facto, rather than de jure discrimination. It was a system of discrimination in which government agencies were essential actors but outwardly appeared uninvolved.76

Conclusions and New Directions

In their final report to Congress, the DPC Commissioners explained that their utilization of private volagencies emerged from an effort to make the DP migration more than “merely an immigration project.” Rather than “setting [DPs] adrift” the decision to put their carefully orchestrated resettlement into the hands of private agencies, the majority of which were religious groups, helped to ensure that this program would “best serve the interests of the Unites States.”77 These “best interests” were not only economic.

As the previous section demonstrated, relying predominantly on religious volagencies served multiple state interests: ideological, geopolitical, obfuscatory, financial, religious,

76 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 275-8; and various documents from folder: Religious Preference, Rosenfield Subject File, Records of Commissioners Rosenfield and O’Connor, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP, including: Nobel J. Gregory to Ugo Carusi, March 8, 1949; Rosenfield to Carusi, February 23, 1949, handwritten note; Ugo Carusi, “Draft: Form Letter, Religious Preference,” draft of form letter with written edits, February 8, 1949; Rosenfield to Carusi and O’Connor, “Religious Preferences in Assurances for Displaced Persons,” December 27, 1948; “Minutes of Commission Meeting Held on February 8, 1949, Re: Religious Preferences Stated on Assurance Applications.”

77 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 209.

285 anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and in the interest of immigrant and workforce social control. Their role as resettlers was a way of mandating refugees’ dispersal; stymying ethnic community formation; bringing about their Americanization; ensuring their entry into American religious communities; facilitating their funneling into the subpar yet labor-hungry farm and domestic sectors; guarding against the entry of Jews and communists; enabling the government’s seeming lack of involvement in the labor placement aspects of this project; turning resettlement into an unprecedented project in immigrant social control; infusing the endeavor with moral and religious significance and a general aura of benevolence; and ensuring a bountiful supply of morally-motivated unpaid non-government workers. In short, religious groups not only made resettlement work, but they made it work for a range of interests.

This analysis, both in respect to religious groups as well as throughout this chapter, necessitates a revised understanding of refugee policy. If we think about the resettlement regime as a piece of equipment designed to produce the migration and to fulfill this diverse range of goals and requirements, then the resettlement plan can best be described as a machine composed of tightly interlaced gears. In other words, it was a scheme in which each of its functioning parts (the gears) brought along the others. The agricultural quota, for example, was closely interlaced with bringing about the law’s exclusion of Jews and the forced dispersal and assimilation of all others. The familial structure aided in each of these aims, while also functioning to conceal them and to overlay the whole endeavor with a powerful structure of feeling. 2(c)3 was a powerful yet invisible brace ensuring that this machine (the migration) would function as a labor migration, while subtly aiding in these other preferences.

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The moral formations might best be understood as the machine’s parameters—it produced a set of specifications that constrained the way that it could and could not be set up (though in another sense, these moral formations also produced this migration, as the moral returns of this endeavor helped to precipitate the eventual outpouring of public support that led to this law’s passage, and they created a large numbers of moral laborers to enact this underfunded and largely infrastructureless endeavor). The use of religious groups can be visualized as its largest, most central gear. It was the piece that drove the machine (they were, quite literally the laborers), and it was interconnected with each and every one of the policy’s goals. And like all of these critical elements, the use of religious groups had a fundamental impact on the texture of how it could work as a labor migration.

Like resettlement’s moral formations, the religious structure seems to have functioned not just as a gear but as a parameter. While its religious structure ideally worked in a way that furthered many of policymakers’ goals, it also came with internal constraints. For example, the decentralized and privatized migratory structure reduced the federal and state governments’ capacity to coordinate this labor migration and to exert control over its impacts. Additionally, private agencies’ own multiple imperatives sometimes undermined the goal of maximizing the economic benefit of this migration.

To be sure, volagencies had a structural incentive to align their practice with the interest of business groups—in order to bring about refugees’ admittance, they needed to convince business organizations and employers that DPs would be a valuable source of labor. But at the same time, their interest in spiritual care and their personal and organizational stakes in being a parental or even Christly figure who would save refugees

287 and uplift them into Americanness sometimes functioned as a built in check against the full unleashing of these economic imperatives and against employers’ exploitation and dehumanization of DP workers.

Finally, religious groups’ centrality also led to a longer term constraining of immigration policy in respect to the capital imperative of crafting it solely in accordance with economic aims. As a result of their involvement in refugee resettlement, religious volagencies and the denominations they represented gained unprecedented political influence over refugee policy, as well as over immigration policy more generally. As

Roger Daniels puts it, religious groups, mostly Christian denominations, have become a predominating force in immigration reform over the last half century. While their advocacy precipitated numerous reforms, it has arguably also stifled more radical alternatives. Arguments for a more just asylum system continue to be dominated by religiously infused and often nationalistic moral claims. A critical exploration of religious groups’ influence over refugee policy and the impact of their prominence in its administration has yet to be written but is of utmost importance.

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UNIT FOUR

Policy through Practice:

Administering Resettlement, 1948-1952

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CHAPTER SEVEN

By the End and From the Start, a Story of Structural Choices:

Federal and State DPCs Orchestrate the DP Labor Migration

As the nation’s first refugee admissions and resettlement law, as a law that included a host of new kinds of requirements and procedures, and as a law that mandated its economic outcomes in obfuscated ways, the Displaced Persons Act left much to be determined by administrative decision and legal regulation. This was a migration, in other words, that would be made on the ground, rather than through the letter of the law. As such, in order to gain a fuller understanding of the economic bearings of U.S. refugee resettlement, this chapter turns to an important layer in the constellation of power that produced this state project. It explores the regulatory and administrative practices of the

U.S. Displaced Persons Commission (DPC), which was the agency created to clarify the law’s requirements and oversee its implementation, and it looks at the practices of state- level displaced persons commissions, which were volunteer-run commissions that oversaw each state’s approach to the program.

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How did these agencies orient themselves in to respect this migration’s economic formations? Focusing on several key administrative decisions and procedural changes, this chapter tracks how, over the course of its four-year tenure, the U.S. Displaced

Persons Commission gradually transformed itself from a renegade agency that tried to undo the more restrictive elements of the Act into one that fell into alignment with legislators’ intentions. While the DPC’s leadership was initially indifferent to the economic impacts of the DP migration, they eventually came to prioritize employers’ interests and to work hard to transform refugee resettlement into a more effective agricultural and domestic labor placement scheme. State-level commissions, on the other hand, set out from the start to maximize resettlement’s utility as a labor migration.

Comprised of volunteer commissioners (generally business and religious leaders, as well as representatives from state departments of agriculture and employment), their entire purpose was to make this national program work for their respective state’s economic interests.

In this chapter, I am particularly concerned with the structural and systemic bearings of administrative decisions, and I argue that for both the national DPC as well as state commissions, their choices and orientations as agencies were connected to the structure of the U.S. resettlement system. In the case of the DPC, to the structure of the assurance system, and in the case of state commissions, to how the underfunded, privatized and largely infrastructure-less U.S. resettlement system deputized those with vested interests in controlling its outcome. The story of the DPC’s changing priorities and the story of the state commissions’ consistent approach: both are stories of “structural choices.”

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In telling this story, this chapter pushes up against various accepted trains of thought in the historiography of the DP migration. The focus on political economy paints a more nuanced portrait: of the DPC, which is valorized in existing scholarship; of the broad swath of volunteers involved in resettlement, persons and organizations who are commonly written about as if their actions unquestionably emerged from an unadulterated goodwill; and of the legal transformation of resettlement law, a shift that is generally portrayed as one toward steady liberalization over the course of this four-year project. Additionally, in this chapter’s concern for how institutions conduct themselves within larger systems of power, it applies newer methods for thinking about policy and nation states to a topic of study that has been dominated by more traditional approaches.

And finally, in telling the story of these agencies’ economic orientations and imperatives, this chapter provides deeper explanatory power into why the U.S. resettlement system emerged in the way it did.

The United States Displaced Persons Commission

While reactionaries in Congress were able to dictate the outcome of the law, it was the pro-admissions executive branch, not Congress, that retained the right to appoint the leadership of the government agency that would oversee this program. Rather than appoint a single commissioner, in an effort to underscore the pan-Judeo-Christian character of the DP migration, as well as the United States’ alleged commitment to treating all DPs equally, Truman appointed three co-commissioners, one from each major faith represented in the camps. Edward O’Connor, who was Catholic, had been the head been the head of the National Catholic Welfare Conference during the War. Ugo Carusi, who was Protestant, was a former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization

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Service. Harry Rosenfield, who was Jewish, had been the principle attorney for the

Federal Security Agency and a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Economic and

Social Council. Like Truman, all three had been proponents of a more permissive law, and these commissioners and the agency they created set out to implement this law according to their vision, rather than its letter.1

One of the DPC’s first tasks was to develop a legal division, and O’Connor,

Carusi and Rosenfield ordered their legal staff to creatively interpret legal precedents in order to tamp down the Act’s most restrictive and discriminatory components. The result, as one social worker recalled, was that the DPC interpreted the law in a way that was

“more liberal than our fondest expectations’” In addition to its legal decisions, the agency’s administrative practices also aimed to liberalize the law and facilitate the migration of DPs to the United States. For example, DPC officers routinely looked the other way when DPs lacked sufficient documentation or when elements of their personal histories would have disqualified them for admissions. The prevailing sense at the time was that the DPC endeavored to “pass everything [everyone], no matter what.”2

In contrast, employees of the other government agencies that were involved in DP processing, namely the INS and State Department’s Visa Division, were notoriously anti-

Semitic and restrictionist. Officers in these agencies went to lengths to exclude refugees, especially Jews, and they publicly accused the DPC of obstructing the implementation of

1 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 183-5; Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Executive Order 10,003, 13 Fed. Reg. 5819 (October 6, 1948); Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 114-8; President, Statement, “Statement by the President Upon Signing the Displaced Persons Act,” Statement 142,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (June 25, 1948); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 42-5.

2 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 183-198; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 114-6, quotes on 115; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 91-108.

293 the law as it was written and intended. The DPC in turn accused them of obstructionism—not of the law but of the flow of DPs to the United States. Both allegations were largely accurate.3

Unsurprisingly, restrictionists in Congress were also outraged by the DPC’s tactics. Spearheaded by Pat McCarran, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration, these legislators launched an attack on the DPC during the 1949 and

1950 debates around amending and extending the Displaced Persons Act. During the

Senate hearings on the amended bill, lawmakers accused the agency of mismanagement and fraud and with permitting the entrance of communist agents posing as DPs. They summonsed DPC employees from Germany to testify, and once on the stand, these officials were publicly harangued. This string of events left the Germany-based staff demoralized and intimidated, and after the hearings, thirty employees submitted their resignations, including the director of the division responsible for processing DPs.4

Because of the DPC’s sheer brazenness and because of the stark contrast between this agency and the INS, the Visa Division, and Congress (and perhaps also out of want for a hero in what is otherwise a dark moment in U.S. history), the DPC is largely glorified by existing scholarship on the DP migration. They are the “good guys” in this demoralizing, harrowing tale in which Congress set out to exclude refugees and discriminate against Jews and others, and in which officials in the State Department and the INS operated as its henchmen, mistreating and abandoning the survivors of the

3 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 108; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 187– 9; Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 116; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 147-151.

4 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 217-252; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 126-7; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 31-2.

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Holocaust. While historians have not extensively explored this agency’s approach to the law’s economic formations, their valorization of this agency could reasonably lead one to assume that they must have similarly toned down the law’s economic components, perhaps refusing to comply with Congress’s goal of configuring this migration into a labor migration.5

In a certain sense, at least in the first years, this assumption would appear to be correct. For example, rather than preferentially admitting DPs on an occupational basis, the DPC set out to process DPs on a first come, first serve basis. And in early 1949 when the United States Employment Service volunteered to send specialists to Europe to certify

DPs’ physical capacities and occupational skills and to help the DPC select the best laborers from the pool of available DPs, the DPC official responsible for overseeing DP screening flatly rejected these proposals. A ranking IRO official who was accustomed to nations treating DPs as a valuable source of labor called this decision a “real mistake.”6

Additionally, in an effort to loosen the hold of the agricultural quota, the legal division broadened the definition of an “agriculturalist” to include truck drivers, grocers, and others who were more peripherally involved in agricultural production. DPC selectors often turned a willful blind eye to DP farmers’ dishonesty in their self-reported occupational histories, and the public record is riddled with accounts of dentists, accountants and others who claimed to have been farmers in order to qualify under the

5 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 106-9; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 183–254; Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 116; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 114-127.

6 Facilities of the United States Employment Service and Its Affiliated State Employment Services Which Could Be Utilized in the Program of the Displaced Persons Commission, Gov. Depts. – Public Works Agencies; E.L. Kennan to John Gibson, December 7, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department; Arthur Motley to Harry Rosenfield, May 11, 1949, Gov. Depts. – Public Works Agencies; all from Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP, United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 80.

295 agricultural quota and who, from the perspective of their American employers, made unsatisfactory agricultural laborers.7

Finally, in these first years, the agency also fought back against 2(c)3’s requirement that refugees must have a volagency certified assurance of a specific job and housing, neither of which could displace an American. In a report to Congress and in behind the scenes political negotiations, the DPC partnered with the CCDP and volagencies to urge lawmakers to eliminate these requirements and proposed a return to the assurances created by the Truman Directive. “The assurance against public charge is sufficient to meet the requirements of all immigration laws,” Rosenfield explained.8

Each of these actions undermined the effort to reconfigure the DP migration into an effective and efficient labor migration; however, this was not the DPC’s primary intent. It was not for ethical reasons that they prevented USES employment officers from scouring the camps for the best workers. Rather, they declined this proposal because it would have made the admissions process more complicated. Similarly, they refused the

USES offer to certify that DPs’ occupational skills matched their job offers because these audits would have opened up yet another avenue in which DPs could be rejected. In respect to the DPC’s effort to broaden the agricultural quota, the agency did so in order to weaken its discriminatory and restrictive impacts, not because it was opposed to funneling DPs into this sector. And finally, the Commissioners’ distaste for the expanded assurance requirements largely stemmed from their realization that the jobs, housing and

7 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 186-7; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 226-241.

8 Rosenfield to Gibson and O’Connor, Legislative Programs for 1952 – Confidential, November 29, 1951, 2, Legislation, 1952, Subject File, Records of the General Counsel, Records of the Legal Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

296 nondisplacement mandates slowed the issuance of assurances and threatened to grind the whole admission process to a halt, not from the way that these mandates relegated DPs to a second class economic and social status. In short, the agency’s overriding concern was to ensure that the full 202,000 permitted to enter under the law would be able to do so, and in the largest part, it was this imperative, not outrage at the program’s economic imperatives, that motivated these measures. The extent to which these policy decisions constricted this program’s efficacy as a labor migration was largely coincidental. Rather than opposed to treating DPs as workers, the agency appeared indifferent to it.9

The DPC’s relative indifference to the migration’s economic formations is perhaps most visibly evident by its failure to regulate refugees’ working conditions. As lawmakers had intended, once in the United States, DPs were regularly treated as cheap labor, and the exploitation of DP workers was endemic, especially in the South and for

DPs who were placed in domestic or farm work.10 The DPC seemed to have realized as much. In its final report to Congress, the DPC conceded that many sponsors, especially in the farm and domestic sectors, “expected too much for too little” and that some even

“sought to exploit the new immigrant.” However, in practice, the agency did little to protect DPs’ rights as workers, and they failed to intervene even in the most egregious cases.11 For example, when DPs in Senatobia, Mississippi contested the harsh treatment and the exploitative financial arrangement accompanying their placement as sharecroppers, the DPC concluded that their labor conditions were acceptable because

9 Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 185.

10 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 124.

11 On “sought to exploit,” United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 205. For “too much for too little,” Ibid, 210.

297 they were normative in the Deep South. The DPC similarly refused to intervene on DPs’ behalf when cases of DP exploitation arose in New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere, but they regularly intervened on behalf of employers. Their failure to protect

DPs from exploitation was cause for public embarrassment when one DP died due from sun stroke and dehydration while picking cotton in Virginia. The Commission floated the idea of developing a vetting system for potential sponsors/employers, but they made little effort to act on it. In fact, despite their realization that mistreatment was commonplace, the agency did not even have a system in place for investigating sponsors’ behaviors or blocking employers accused of exploiting DPs from sponsoring additional persons.12

Why would this renegade agency, which went so far out of its way liberalize this law and which is so glorified in existing scholarship, turn a blind eye to DPs’ exploitation? In part, this failure speaks to the extent to which DPs specifically and immigrants in general were dehumanized and denigrated in American society, even by their most avid supporters. The agency’s indifference reflects their acceptance of the widespread idea that immigrants’ proper place was at the bottom of the nation’s social and economic ladder and of the notion that DPs and other impoverished persons would become dependent if the government or another outside source were to step in on their behalf. It is also indicative of the continued resistance to the New Deal notion that governments should protect workers’ rights and of many immigrants’ and agricultural workers’ exclusion from the New Deal.13

12 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 124; Maegi, “Dangerous Persons, Delayed Pilgrims,” 223-236; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 188, 241.

13 Nina Bernstein, “After a Fight to Survive, One to Succeed,” New York Times (March 9, 2008): 33.

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At the same time, there are also structural explanations for this failure, and the answer to this question also lies in the configuration of the refugee system. The DPC was severely underfunded, and while the agency’s leadership initially wanted to exert more control over refugees’ resettlement, with only one hundred full-time staff, they ultimately chose to devote their resources to processing DPs in Europe, instead delegating the task of domestic resettlement to private organizations. In other words, close oversight was not possible or prioritized. Further, because the Commission’s overriding prerogative was to facilitate DP admissions in order to reach the full number permitted by law, a task which itself seemed improbable given the Act’s extensive restrictions, protecting DPs’ rights as workers was simply a lesser concern. In comparison to “rescuing” DPs from the camps, stopping their mistreatment by American employers seemed relatively unimportant.

Finally, because no DP could enter the United States without a job offer by an American employer, the DPC had a vested interest in aligning itself with employers, in staying out of the business of regulating their treatment of DPs, and in working to insure that this migration best met their interests.14

This last point is particularly critical because it points to a structural condition inherent in the assurance system, a system that remains to the present day. It is also important because it helps to make sense of what would otherwise appear to be a confusing transition over the course of the DPC’s tenure as an agency. From an organization that was initially indifferent to the way that their policies affected employers to one that went out of its way to rework the migration in employers’ interests, the DPC underwent a radical transformation during its four year tenure. The next section looks at

14 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 57-8.

299 what the DPC did when issues arose that tested employers’ support for this program and threatened to decrease the flow of job assurances. Focusing on several specific programs and organizational changes, this section tells the story of the agency’s gradual shift toward more effectively and explicitly orienting itself as an employment agency, and it sheds light on the role of structural factors in bringing this about. Like the agency’s failure to stand up against DP exploitation, the decision to go forward with these changes was related to the configurations of power in the U.S. resettlement system, and they speak to the allegiances and orientations that this system predisposed.

Section Two [title needed!]

In the first year of the program, employer complaints were common but not universal. The vast majority of disgruntled employers were from one specific sector: the agricultural industry. As a DPC commissioner explained, unsatisfactory farm placements

“furnished the grounds for the most vocal and widespread criticism and publicity against the program.” These discontented farm employers had three primary problems with the program. First, they were enraged by the lengthy wait between applying for a DP

(submitting a job offer) and their arrival in the United States. “All of us are thoroughly and completely disappointed with the length of time that seems to elapse between the signing of the assurances by the sponsor in our community, and the actual time of arrival of the displaced person,” wrote a group of farmers from Wisconsin. When their DP workers had not arrived by the start of the planting season, some sponsors claimed that they were forced to downsize their crop for the year; others canceled their assurances and attempted to hire migrant laborers or other workers.15

15 Ibid, 228-9, 241.

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A second complaint was that DPs assigned to farm work had little agricultural experience and no understanding of the work expectations in this sector. Employers wrote to the DPC complaining that DP workers were unaware that they would be expected to work seven days a week and would not be paid overtime. “Whoever heard of a farmer or farm laborers only working 40 hours a week?” wrote one sponsor in exasperation. This individual, and thousands others like him, urged the agency to do a better job selecting farmers and informing them of the expectations in this sector.16

Third and most direly from their perspective, farm employers and agencies were enraged by the quick turnover among DPs assigned to farm jobs. Indeed, a majority of

DPs resettled as farmworkers in rural areas did eventually migrate to urban centers where wages were higher and where they could live amongst others who spoke their language and shared similar experiences and cultural backgrounds. By 1950, fewer than twenty percent of those originally placed on farms remained in their initial placements. As

Genizi explains, the quota gave DPs “little choice but to apply for farm employment.”

With little experience in this sector, most assigned to agricultural work were unprepared for the long hours, low pay and strenuous work, nor for the feelings of isolation and depression that these rural placements often generated. In towns and cities, there were established ethnic communities and higher paying jobs, and for many, the allure was irresistible.17

Farm employers found a receptive ear among the volagencies charged with administering the program. With the DPC’s support, volagencies began to tell DPs that

16 Ibid, 226-236, quote on 229.

17 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 122-5, quote on 123; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 226-242, 248-259, 372.

301 they were obligated to work in their initial jobs for a substantial period of time, generally at least a year, and some even made farmworkers sign written contracts. They also attempted to orchestrate higher retention rates through the use of social pressure and surveillance. Volagencies instructed local churches and community leaders to monitor

DPs more closely and to make repeated visits to their homes and workplaces.

Additionally, volagencies urged religious leaders to step up their efforts to incorporate

DPs into their local religious communities. Doing so would help DPs build roots in the community and create the necessary social pressure and sense of obligation to remain there and fulfill their sponsor’s (employer’s) wishes.18

Volagencies and the farm lobby also worked to pressure the DPC to modify its processing program to better serve the nation’s “manpower needs.” In 1949, volagencies convened a national conference on this theme, and they invited business groups and related government agencies, including the Farm Placement Service, the U.S.

Employment Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Extension Service, to draft recommendations to the DPC.19 That year, the American Farm Bureau, which with

1.3 million members and the strong financial backing of large agribusinesses was the nation’s largest, most well-capitalized and influential farm lobby, also issued a national resolution on DP resettlement. The statement urged a number of changes, all of which resonated with the ideas generated at the volagency conference: improved occupational screening, a reduced delay between employers’ submission of a job offer and the arrival

18 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 123-4, 181-2; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 210.

19 A.W. Motley, “Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, 2, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP; Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 188-191.

302 of DPs, and regulations binding DPs to farm placements for longer periods of time.

Importantly, the statement implied that these changes were a condition of the Bureau’s continued support of the U.S. refugee program.20

As an agency, especially before the explosive Senate hearings, the DPC was relatively indifferent to public opinion and to the economic utility of the DP labor migration. However, when employer discontent threatened to reduce the flow of already scarce assurances (job offers), their approach shifted gradually yet dramatically. This discontent, the agency realized, threatened to jeopardize the entire effort. As one official explained it, “no assurance—no DP.” In other words, widespread employer interest was a necessary condition for refugees’ very eligibility to enter the United States. This fact left the DPC with a vested interest in appeasing farm employers, and this was a fact that the agency eventually realized and acted on accordingly.21

In respect to employer complaints about the protracted wait for DPs to arrive, the

DPC eventually changed the way that it processed DPs’ applications. When Carusi stepped down in 1950, he was replaced by the Assistant Secretary of Labor John Gibson, who set out to make sure they were meeting the “current manpower needs of the country.”22 Under his leadership, the agency reworked the “refugee pipeline,” the term used for the procedure used to process DPs. (Curiously, DPC officials also referred to DP

20 American Farm Bureau Federation, statement, 1949, folder: American Farm Bureau Federation, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC; John Lynn to Emily Lehan, December 29, 1949, American Farm Bureau Federation, box 289, Series III, Part III, IRSA Records, IHRC.

21 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 271.

22 “Opening Statement of John W. Gibson, Chairman, Displaced Persons Commission, On Budget Estimates for Fiscal Year 1952 before House Appropriations Committee,” folder: “Displaced Persons Commission,” box 34, Displaced Persons Commission Subject Files, John W. Gibson Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO.

303 processing as a “production line,” and not incidentally, they drew from labor management ideas in developing this refugee production line.)23 Previously, refugees were “sent down the pipeline” only after a volagency matched an individual or a family with an appropriate job. The family’s files were then transferred to the IRO, which investigated their history to certify they were “eligible Displaced Persons” under international refugee law, and after this check, the DPC would then sequentially begin the other screening measures. Under the new system instated by Gibson, DPC officers began processing applications concurrently with the IRO, rather than waiting for that agency’s approval, and the officers assigned to each of the nearly two dozen additional DPC checks did these concurrently, rather than sequentially. From an organizational perspective, these changes were inefficient: DPC officers’ caseloads multiplied and they spent significant amounts of time completing security and eligibility checks for individuals who were later declared ineligible by the IRO or by a DPC officer responsible for a different check. Yet from the vantage of potential employers, the process was much more efficient and advantageous. The new procedures were expected to reduce the length of time between the issuance of an assurance and the arrival of workers in the United

States. The goal, as DPC publicists explained to potential employers, was to reduce the delay from six to three months, allowing a farm sponsor who requested a DP in the winter to receive their worker by the start of the planting season.24

23 In the end, DPC officials admitted flaws in this logic, noting that “human beings could not be ‘processed’ like machines on an assembly line.” United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 72-76.

24 Ibid. Glenn E. Brockway, Regional Director, Region X to E. L. Keenan, Deputy Director, December 1, 1950, Government Departments – Department of Labor, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Robert J. Corkery, Coordinator for Europe to All Senior Officers and Staff, “Instruction Memorandum No. 187: Changes in Resettlement Center Processing Procedures and the Initiation of the Investigation by the 66th,” December 13, 1950, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; 304

In respect to farmers’ complaints that DPs frequently did not possess the necessary skills or experience, the DPC reversed its early decision declining Motley’s offer of employ USES occupational selectors. In late 1950, the DPC hired fourteen occupational analysts from state USES branches, and six specialists appointed by the

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Stationed in each of the DP camps in the U.S. zone, these inspectors certified each job placement submitted by the volagencies, confirming that the individual DP’s physical and occupational skills matched the job requirements. In addition to this paperwork audit, farm applicants underwent an additional exam. They were required to physically demonstrate their skills to the agricultural specialists as a condition of their eligibility. In addition to assessing each DP’s laboring capacity, the selectors fine-tuned this labor migration in additional ways. They analyzed applicants’ personal histories and personalities in order to gauge if they would be “likely to become a public charge,” and they used these interviews to impress upon applicants that they were obligated to abide by the labor arrangements dictated by their sponsoring employers.

Upon the DPC’s urging, inspectors were particularly adamant about “impress[ing] the applicant with his obligations to the sponsor, particularly when a farm placement is involved.”25

“Processing of Applicants,” February 6, 1951, Govt Depts – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; A.W. Motley, “Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP.

25 Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “A Report on Farm Labor Supply Among German Expellees”, June 20, 1951, German Ethnics, Subject File, Records of the General Counsel, Records of the Legal Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Selection of Farm Families,” February 6, 1951, Govt Depts – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

305

In addition to more streamlined processing and newly required occupational screening for all migrants, the DPC created a “preassurance processing program” to facilitate the migration of select DPs on an occupational basis and to do so with the utmost speed. This program was the brainchild of the volagencies and others who participated in various regional resettlement conferences in 1949 and 1950, and it aimed to reduce employers’ wait time from many months to weeks or even days. Instead of waiting for a job offer, the DPC and IRO began processing select DP applicants before they were matched with an assurance. Once an employer submitted a request, only minimal INS and health screenings remained. This program was limited to DPs who agreed to more intensive occupational screenings and who had experience in nineteen select professions, many of which reflect the rapid growth of the military industrial complex as the Cold War intensified and the United States entered the Korean War.

Because McCarthy-era controls barred non-citizens from direct employment in the defense industry, DPC officers targeted DPs who could aid the national defense in related professions: machinists, tool and die makers, welders and others received top priority, as did agricultural workers (as Gibson explained, “farm operators and workers comprise a key agricultural resource in our defense effort”). To increase the effectiveness of this prescreening, Gibson coordinated with the U.S. Employment Services so that DPC officers would receive “advanced alerts” about projected labor needs throughout the

United States. This system involved keeping tabs on on-the-ground labor needs, a capacity that the federal government gained only relatively recently with its massively expanding foray into labor and population management during and after World War II.26

26 “Preprocessing of Cases,” February 6, 1951, Govt Depts – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, 306

The preprocessing program is more significant in what it reveals about the DPC than in the impact it had on resettlement. As a testament to the miscommunication and disorganization that characterized the whole operation, volagencies mistakenly believed that preprocessed DPs were “nonagency cases,” meaning cases that had been directly matched with sponsors and would not need a volagency assurance. As a result, these agencies overlooked preprocessed DPs, and in January of 1952, a year after the program began, nearly 8,000 preprocessed families remained in the camps. By the end of the program, nearly 3,000 of these preprocessed “top priority” laborers and their families remained unmatched and were never permitted to immigrate to the United States. Yet while the program was relatively small and embarrassingly ineffective, it nonetheless sheds vivid light on the DPCs’ shifting institutional priorities. Believing that the migration’s economic outcomes were irrelevant to their aims, the DPC initially rejected the use of occupational selectors in the camps, but by early 1951, the Commission not only welcomed selectors to the camps, but created its own targeted occupational selection program.27

The focus of the operation was also revealing. While DPs in a range of occupations were eligible for preprocessing, in practice, almost every preprocessed refugee was a farmer, and when the program was initiated in January of 1951, DPC officers first set out to preprocess five to ten thousand agricultural laborers so that they would be available by start of the planting season in the spring. The demographic

NACP; “A Report on Farm Labor Supply Among German Expellees”, June 20, 1951, German Ethnics, Subject File, Records of the General Counsel, Records of the Legal Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 189-196.

27 Ibid.

307 breakdown amongst preprocessed DPs is similarly revealing. When selecting refugees for preprocessing, the DPC explicitly favored ethnic Germans. The American agricultural selectors chosen for the program all spoke German, rather than one of the other languages common in the camps, and the DPC told U.S. farm employers that Germans were particularly hardy, able laborers. This focus on German DPs had a logistical explanation.

The amended legislation reserved 45,000 visas for ethnic Germans from , many of whom were believed to have collaborated with German occupiers during the war and who fled afterwards fearing retribution. The DPC prioritized them for preprocessing not because the agency itself was particularly pro-German, but out of concern that they would not be able to find sufficient assurances for this many persons. Yet regardless of the explanation, it is quite notable that this previously insurgent organization, an agency that had bemoaned the biases in the original law, later came to create a program that favored many Nazi collaborators over victims of the Holocaust.28

More than reflect institutional shifts, this program also precipitated them. Once the DPC realized that volagencies were avoiding preprocessed refugees, the agency not only pushed them on volagencies but partnered with the Farm Placement Service and with local and national agricultural extension agencies to launch its own farm employee matching program. Reaching out to industrial farmers, DPC Resettlement Director Elliott

Shirk and other ranking officers began to personally contact employers who had expressed interest in the program or who, like C. F. Seabrook, had already sponsored large numbers of DPs. Shirk provided these agribusinesses with extensive biographical and occupational information on each available DP and allowed them to hand pick

28 Ibid; Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 127.

308 individual workers. Thirty-two companies participated in this program, resulting in the resettlement of 1,400 families. Just as significantly, the creation of the program and the efforts underwent to place laborers directly with corporate sponsors helped to transform the DPC into an agency that was much more directly engaged with employers: it became an agency whose resettlement staff were essentially labor placement officers for agribusinesses.29

Finally, in addition to the changes to processing procedures and to the creation of an occupational selection programs the DPC also undertook an extensive effort to address farm employers’ desire that DPs be made to stay at their jobs for a significant period of time. This effort began in early 1949 when the DPC pressured volagencies to create techniques to bind DPs to their initial job placements but their most pointed efforts to this effect transpired in conjunction with the Congressionally mandated “Oath of Good

Faith.” During the debates over amending and extending the Displaced Persons Act,

Congress had considered specifying a minimum length of time in which DPs would be required to work at their initial placement or be subject to deportation. No such requirement was included in the final bill, which was passed in June of 1950. But as a compromise, this law, which is known as the McGrath-Neely Act, included a refugee

“Oath of Good Faith,” requiring each refugee to swear under oath that he or she “accepts and agrees in good faith to abide by the terms of employment provided … in the

29 Lynn O. Hollist, Director, Cooperative Extension Work, Agriculture and Home Economics, Territory of Alaska and John W. Gibson, Chairman, Displaced Persons Commission, November 27, 1951, Alaska, Correspondence with State Committees and Commissions, General Records, Records of the Resettlement Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Displaced Persons Commission, press release, n.d., Alaska, Correspondence with State Committees and Commissions, General Records, Records of the Resettlement Division, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP.

309 assurance upon which his application for a visa … is based.”30 If a person left his or her job before their contract expired, he or she could be subject to deportation, lest they could prove that they had not intended all along to break their contract. In other words, refugees were required to agree to the labor conditions and wages laid out in their assurance, and in the case that they found their job isolating or unbearable, finding a new job was not advisable, as doing so could be taken as proof that they took this oath under false pretenses. Official statements explained that the measure was “aimed at fraud … and is not intended as a means of general labor-management techniques,” but internal records contradict this claim, and regardless, threatening DPs with deportation had precisely this effect.31

This element of the McGrath-Neely Act is rarely remarked upon in existing scholarship, which generally narrates the legal history of DP admissions as one of marked liberalization. Indeed, the revised 1950 version of the law eliminated the initial Act’s most egregious elements, including the dateline and agricultural and Baltic quotas, and it extended DP admissions for another two years and permitted the migration of an additional 200,000 persons. Advocated by the CCDP and the DPC, the elimination of these elements removed the most blatant restrictiveness and anti-Semitism from the law, elements which had subjected the United States to much domestic and international

30 An Act to Amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. 81-555, 64 Stat. 262 (1950); United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 37-8, 190-1.

31 Ibid; “The Oath of Good Faith or Affirmation,” February 6, 1951, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, “American Farmers Will Benefit by Changes in Displaced Persons Farm Labor Program,” pamphlet (Washington, 1951), National Agricultural Library; for quote, United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 38.

310 criticism and that obstructed the broader effort to hold up this measure as proof that the

United States was a supremely moral superpower in the context of the brewing Cold

War.32 However, despite the fact that the amended Act is generally seen as a liberalizer victory, it actually tightened this migration’s function as a labor migration. Not only through the Oath of Good Faith, it also did so by eliminating the agricultural quota, which had paradoxically worked against the goal of transforming DPs into a valuable source of agricultural labor. With “little choice but to apply for farm employment,” most assigned to agricultural work seemed to have made subpar employees from the perspectives of their employers. In converting the agricultural quota into a non-numerical first preference, the law attempted to cut down on the number of DPs who left their jobs prematurely.33

The fact that the DPC wrote an administered the Oath, along with the other new elements of the law, is not particularly notable as they were legally required to do so (a fact, however, that had not deterred them two years earlier). What is crucial is the whole hearted way that they embraced it. In regulations drawn out after the Act’s passage, the

DPC decreed that on the condition of their migration, refugees would be compelled to sign the Oath of Good Faith not once but three times: when they were first matched with a job placement, during the final stage of processing, and finally, at the port of embarkation en route to the United States. At each occasion, copies of the Oath, which explicitly noted that they would be subject to deportation if found to have signed it

32 An Act to Amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. 81-555, 64 Stat. 262 (1950); Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 217-253.

33 Genizi, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 123; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 81, 225-6.

311 disingenuously, were given to the DPs, and they were required to bring it with them to the United States. Additionally, order to further dissuade refugees from leaving their original jobs, the DPC created extensive social pressures around the Oath. They ensured that the volagencies were on board with enforcing it, and they convened a large conference of ethnic newspapers and asked each to place notices about the Oath in their papers. The purpose of doing so was to spread the word among ethnic communities in the

United States that DPs were not permitted to quit their jobs. 34

Perhaps most strikingly, the DPC strengthened the efficacy of the Oath by building up an orientation program around it. Beginning during the 1949 Congressional debates about the program, the agency’s drive to create in-camp orientation services was a response to dissention from volagencies, industry organizations and individual employers. With the exception of IRO-sponsored English language courses and sparse, disconnected programming offered by some private aid organizations, namely the

YMCA/YWCA World Relief and the American Friends Service Committee, there had previously been few services available to prepare DPs for life in the United States. In

1949 the DPC appointed a full-time staff person to coordinate and expand this programming, and in collaboration with World Relief they created camp reading rooms called “American Houses.” Here, refugees could access maps, books and films about life

34 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 202-5; “The Oath of Good Faith or Affirmation,” February 6, 1951, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Orientation”, February 6, 1951, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, “American Farmers Will Benefit by Changes in Displaced Persons Farm Labor Program,” pamphlet (Washington, 1951), National Agricultural Library.

312 in the United States, and particularly about rural America. With funding from the

Carnegie Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee partnered with the DPC to create a booklet titled Guide for New Americans that emphasized refugees’ duties under the law, as well as basic facts about living and working in the United States. The goal of this program was to educate DPs and to prepare them for their new lives and jobs so that the resulting migration would better meet the “total needs of the United States.”

Shortly after the passage of the 1950 amendments, the DPC expanded this orientation program, creating a mandatory six-part lecture series. This series, which became the crux of refugees’ preparation for the United States, was designed as an extended promotion of the Oath of Good Faith, and it solidified the refugee orientation program as a program to sculpt them compliant laborers and dutiful subjects.35

While the lectures were the crux of the orientation program, the crux of the lectures was that the Oath of Good Faith required refugees to fulfill the terms of their employment contracts and to remain at their jobs for an extended period of time, lest be deported to Germany. While the Oath did require DPs to accept the employment terms offered to them (terms that they had no control over and that generally meant little to them given their unfamiliarity with U.S. wages and the labor market), it did not technically require refugees to stay at their jobs for any specific amount of time. DPs were only required to have taken the jobs in “good faith,” and if they chose to quit for

35 American Council for Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Service, Guide for New Americans: An Introduction to Your New Homeland, (New York: Astoria Press), 1949); Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-774, 62 Stat. 1009 (1948); Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 43; Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; “Orientation,” February 6, 1951, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 200-206, quote on 201.

313 reasons that arose after migrating, even if quitting violated the terms of their work contract, they did not violate the law. However, in the lecture series, like the public notices and their instructions to volagencies, the DPC told refugees that staying and being good workers was their obligation under the law and that those who did not comply would be deported.36

In short, while the law itself only required DPs to swear that they had accepted their jobs in good faith, the DPC treatment of the Oath worked to turn it into something more. Their treatment of this new clause worked to enforce the law even beyond its letter, a sharp reversal from the early years in which the agency had deliberately undermined the

Displaced Persons Act’s restrictions. In doing so, the DPC helped to put the Oath in line with its intended function as a labor management tool and in line with the desires of the more conservative lawmakers who had wanted to bind DPs to their jobs for at least a year. Commissioner O’Connor admitted as much to a ranking official in the Department of Agriculture: the goal was to bring about “a relationship which would cause the families to stay at least a year,” he wrote. The Displaced Persons Commission understood

Congress’s intent, and the “real impetus for the program,” their final report admitted, was not to root out fraud, but to align the practice of resettlement, if not with the law, then with the desires of Congress and with the needs of the employers and business groups that had so vociferously advocated for these changes.37

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid. For “to stay at least a year,” Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; for “real impetus,” United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 202.

314

That farm employers were the intended beneficiaries of these changes was no secret. In a letter to the Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Extension Service,

Commissioner O’Connor explained that these lectures were directed at agricultural migrants. After all, farm employment, and to a lesser extent domestic service, were the main economic sectors that operated on a contract basis, and the overwhelming majority of complaints about employee turnover concerned farm sponsorships. In a pamphlet that was distributed to farmers, extension agencies and volagencies across the nation, the DPC told farmers that these changes made hiring DP farmworkers even “more advantageous to farmers.” This pamphlet, aptly titled “American Farmers will Benefit by Changes in

Displaced Persons Farm Labor Program,” also explained that the processing changes, the decision to use of occupational selectors, and the creation of the preassurance processing program were similarly instituted to benefit farmers.38

What these changes did for refugees, on the other hand, was to turn their

“resettlement” into a forced migration. While refugees technically retained the right to refuse to migrate to the United States, there were few other options: finding a different resettlement country, remaining in the camps indefinitely, returning to the country they had fled, attempting to immigrate illegally to the country of their choice, or once the IRO expired, living in Germany. Many believed that immigrating to the United States was a better option than these alternatives, but they realized that in order to do so, they must submit to the terms of this labor migration. Allowed entry only if deemed desirable by an

38 For O’Connor, see Edward M. O’Connor, Commissioner to Paul V. Kepner, Assistant to the Director, Extension Service, Department of Agriculture, November 15, 1950, Gov. Depts. – Agricultural Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; for pamphlet, United States Displaced Persons Commission, “American Farmers Will Benefit by Changes in Displaced Persons Farm Labor Program,” pamphlet (Washington, 1951), National Agricultural Library.

315 employer and by 1950 only if they passed occupational examinations, they were then obliged to accept the locale, housing, and job chosen by their sponsoring volagency and to agree to the wages and working conditions dictated by the employer selected by their volagency. As this migration proceeded, volagencies increasingly aligned their approach with the interests of DP employers and local business groups, from issuing employer- friendly policy prescriptions to deploying local church leaders to monitor DPs’ comportment as workers, and the DPC created social and institutional pressures (not in the least, the threat of deportation) to bind refugees to their assigned jobs regardless of the working conditions. Given no choice but to accept the terms of this migration, once they arrived, refugees bid their dues until they could figure out a way to move to another location or occupation without risking deportation. As the daughter of DP parents explained in her memoir, this system was nothing less than indentured servitude, but it was a servitude that her parents were willing to agree to in exchange for the chance to leave the refugee camps.39

What is perhaps most striking about the transformation of U.S. resettlement into a more streamlined labor migration (and for that matter, one that arguably constituted indentured servitude) is that many of the critical changes that brought this about were promulgated by the Displaced Persons Commission, an agency that has been valorized by existing scholarship and which was so brazenly defiant in certain aspects of its approach to the program. Curiously, even by the end of 1952 when the agency was working hand- in-hand with agribusinesses to place preprocessed DP farmers and when they regularly used the threat of deportation to bind refugees to their jobs, behind the scenes

39 Indentured servitude is also language used in another memoir, Ella E. Schneider Hilton, Displaced Person: A Girl’s Life in Russia, Germany, and America (LSU Press, 2006), 219.

316 conversations suggest that the commissioners themselves, especially O’Connor and

Rosenfield, were not particularly interested in or enthusiastic about designing the refugee policy around economic concerns. The decision to go forward with these policy and procedural changes, to address each of the major complaints by farm employers, and to act on each of the demands pushed forward by the 1949 resettlement conference and

Farm Bureau statement—this decision seems to have been a “structural choice.” It was a choice they made almost despite themselves and for reasons that are related to the structure of the system, in large part to the assurance-based resettlement system. Because refugee admissions relied on the steady flow of job offers, the power relations inherent in this system predisposed them to prioritize employers’ interests over refugees,’ a point that I emphasize not in order to excuse their actions, but to point out a dangerous dynamic that in large part remains unchanged to the present day.

State Commissions

State-level DPCs were not mandatory but created at the volition of state governments, and often at the urging of a local chapter of the CCDP or with some level of collaboration with state leaders who had been involved in the fight for DP admissions.

Thirty-five states eventually created commissions, and while each was configured somewhat differently, they were generally composed of prominent citizens and religious leaders, agricultural and business leaders, and in some cases, representatives from consumer groups, labor organizations, volagencies, and ethnic organizations. Each also included a number of government leaders, generally officials from their state’s departments of agriculture, employment or welfare or from local agricultural extension agencies or USES branches. Some state DPCs gave considerable influence to state

317 industrial and development boards, to local employment agencies, or even to the

Chamber of Commerce, but none ever appointed DPs to prominent positions.40

Unlike the national DPC, these state-level commissions were, from their very inception, wholly committed to using their influence to transform refugee resettlement into an effective labor placement scheme. While each operated somewhat differently, all set out to develop their state’s approach to resettlement in a way that would maximize its benefits for local communities. For most, this meant facilitating the entry of specific types of DP workers and attempting to influence the terms of their labor and its impact on surrounding communities.41

Many state commissions requested detailed information about individual DPs just days after Truman signed the bill into law and before the U.S. DPC had even formed, much less created the regulatory framework for this migration. Some of the more active state commissions, particularly Minnesota and Wisconsin, actually formed during the months and years before the law was passed, and during this time, they conducted extensive surveys of local attitudes and employment conditions, and they presented this data to Congress in 1947 and 1948, along with strong personal testaments about their states’ eagerness to absorb DP laborers.42

40 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 120; Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 17-22; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 295-309.

41 Thirteen states did not form commissions, nor did Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and other U.S. colonies, though DPs migrated to every U.S. state and colony. United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 295-309.

42 Ibid, 294-5, 300-1; A.W. Motley, Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 17-22; “Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, 2, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP.

318

The majority of state commissions formed after the passage of the Displaced

Persons Act, and they undertook a range of different tasks that helped to maximize the economic benefit to their respective states. The majority collected employment data and investigated which regions could benefit from which types of labor and which sectors were most amenable to hiring immigrants. They provided this data to volagencies operating in their state, and they encouraged them to use it to make job and residential placements. As the coordinating body for volagencies operating in their state, they attempted to sculpt local volagencies’ approaches to placing DP workers in even broader ways. For example, they encouraged the recruitment of specific types of workers and advised volagencies on best practices to ensure that these placements met employers’ needs. Some even advertised the program to potential employers, who they then referred to local volagencies, and a few took a more direct role, serving as DPs’ official sponsors.

State commissions were also intermediaries between local volagencies and the national

DPC. They communicated national policy to local agencies (for example, policies about binding refugees’ to their jobs), and they also advocated for local interests with the U.S.

DPC, working to ensure that this agency was best serving the state’s interests.43

Many state commissions placed particular emphasis on serving local farmers.

Michigan, for example, had a division for recruiting farmworkers, as well as a special program to recruit DPs who were medical doctors and to place them in rural, farming areas which often lacked medical professionals. States that focused on farmers did so in part because of the lobbying of farm groups, many of which were incorporated into the commission’s leadership. In Maryland, for example, local farmers and agribusinesses

43 Ibid.

319 circulated the idea of recruiting farmworkers even before the establishment of a state commission. By the fall of 1948, the state governor established county-level commissions comprised of a representative from the state employment security agency, a local agricultural extension agent, and three citizens, usually farm, business or labor leaders. At the behest of the Maryland commission, the Maryland-based Ukrainian American Relief

Committee used its overseas facilitates to “channel farmers into Maryland,” and several farm agencies and one agro-industry leader traveled directly to Germany to handpick DP farmers for this state.44

State commissions exercised considerable influence over the nature of this labor migration through their federally-sanctioned capacity to audit incoming assurances. Many commissions took on the responsibility of verifying the legal requirement that migrants would be suitably employed without displacing an American from a job or housing.

Rather than developing new methods to ascertain these requirements, state DPCs called on state agencies that already conducted such checks for the Bracero and H-2 programs.

These agencies were already aligned with the interests of growers and others employing large numbers of immigrant workers, and as such, they often sanctioned the direct funneling of DP workers into low-paid, non-union, labor-intensive jobs.45 Some state commissions audited assurances according to their own additional criterion. In New

44 “Maryland,” Correspondence with State Committees and Commissions 1949-1952, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 302-3.

45 “Facilities of the United States Employment Service and Its Affiliated State Employment Services Which Could Be Utilized in the Program of the Displaced Persons Commission”, n.d., Gov. Depts. – Federal Works Agency, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 201; Proceedings of the National Resettlement Conference, 26; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 295-309.

320

Jersey, for example, the commission evaluated sponsors’ capacity to insure that the DPs would not become public charges, and it analyzed DP’s biographical data to insure that they were the “right kind” of immigrant for the state and for the proposed job.46

Because the United States’ assurance-based resettlement system made procuring jobs the central task of resettling refugees, it is perhaps unsurprising that state DPC’s primary activity was facilitating these labor placements. By delegating the administration of this federally-sanctioned migration to state agencies and private groups, the severely understaffed, underfunded national DPC was able to better insure that resettlement would function effectively at the local level.47 Yet in practice, this meant that those with a vested interested in controlling the terms of this labor migration were deputized as its administrators. This state-level control of this federally-sanctioned migration allowed states (and the private individuals and organizations that that they collaborated with) to transform this migration into one that more closely met local interests and fulfilled the

Congressional mandate to transform DPs into a source of inexpensive labor. Indeed,

Congress fully intended that state and private agencies would do the dirty work of this labor placement scheme. Such was state DPCs’ explicit promise during the debates preceding the passage of the 1948 law.48

Both by the U.S. DPC and individual state DPCs, real choices were made that led to the DP migration’s implementation as a labor migration, for the latter from the

46 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 305.

47 Indeed, the DPC thought of these state agencies as a “partial substitute for Commission offices,” which did not exist due to budgetary limitations. United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 295.

48 Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, 2, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP.

321 beginning and for the former, from the start. In both cases, these choices emerged not in a vacuum, but in intimate connection with the structure of the resettlement system. This history, in short, is a history of structural choices.

Conclusion: Kalmyk DPs and the Future of Resettlement

Because religious aid workers and U.S. DPC resettlement officers overseeing the

Kalmyks’ resettlement circumvented New Jersey’s displaced persons commission, the influence of state DPCs (or lack thereof) over the Kalmyks’ resettlement is not representative of general patterns. Kalmyk resettlement was also an outlier in U.S. DPC practice, and with the exception of a handful of other so-called “special projects,” such direct and ongoing involvement by federal officials was extremely rare.49 However, the history of this agency reveals that elements of their involvement with the Kalmyks were indicative of larger organizational patterns during the latter years of its existence. Most plainly, the Kalmyk project bears out the DPC’s solidified alliances with farm and business organizations and its commitment to directing refugees toward farm and domestic employment. The DPC’s expanding corporate connections facilitated the

Kalmyks’ temporary placement near Seabrook Farms. It encouraged volagencies to use the specter of the Oath of Good Faith’s deportation clause to dissuade refugees from leaving their initial job placements, which was Brethren Service’s precise response when

New Mexican Kalmyks attempted to leave the state and return to the East Coast. Finally,

49 Other special programs that involved the direct involvement U.S. DPC resettlement officers included the resettlement of physically handicapped persons, preprocessed individuals, persons with advanced professional and technical training, individuals recruited by the State Department and the CIA, and a project permitting several hundred DP students to be sponsored by American universities, rather than employers. There was also a project with the Departments of the Interior and Navy to resettle DP physicians in Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa and the “Trust Territories.” With the exception of these programs, the U.S. DPC intervened in DP placements only after problems arose. United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 197-200.

322 the attitudes expressed by resettlement officer Elliot Shirk during the investigation of the

New Mexico project—that while New Mexican Kalmyks were indeed lonely, community members on the East Coast had led them to exaggerate their unhappiness, hence causing the resettlement to fail—were indicative of the agency’s stance in respect to DPs’ emotional adjustment in the United States The agency acknowledged that community networks were an important source of support for these migrants who had experience significant trauma in Europe, and they conceded that friendships with more established

DPs and with Americans enabled many refugees to escape exploitative work environments. However, its official stance was that such support networks often harmed the DPs’ relationship with their employers and could prove counterproductive for the aims of the resettlement program.50

For the most part, the Kalmyks’ resettlers believed that this endeavor was unique and unlikely to be replicated in the future. However, in one critical way, the Kalmyk project was trial run for a new model of refugee resettlement. The Kalmyks arrived in the

United States before they were assigned jobs, which defied the legal requirements for DP admissions. Rather than an assurance from a specific employer, the Kalmyks entered the

United States through a Church World Service-backed “blanket assurance.” Developed by the DPC’s legal division, blanket assurances were volagency pledges that the designated refugees would be resettled according to the law once they arrived in the

United States, despite the fact that the specific employer/sponsor had not yet been determined. DPC commissioners strongly encouraged the largest, most trusted volagencies to use these assurances and were “tremendously delighted” when Church

50 United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 234

323

World Service adopted this method. Instead of beginning the extensive screening process only after the volagency matched a specific family of DPs with specific employers, the issuance of blanket assurances enabled the U.S. DPC to begin this process concurrently with the volagency’s search for jobs. Doing so directly accommodated employers’ concerns about the DP program because it reduced the length of time between their issuance of a job offer and the arrival of the DP worker.51

Church World Service began using blanket assurances in late 1949, and the

Kalmyks were only several hundred of many thousands of DPs who were admitted into the United States through this mechanism.52 However, the way that their resettlement transpired under this mechanism was unique, and it hewed more closely to a model of resettlement advocated by many agricultural employers, extension agents and state DPCs.

First suggested at a 1950 regional resettlement conference in Milwaukee, these individuals and organizations advocated transforming the structure of refugee resettlement so that workers would arrive in larger groups on an occupational basis and then transferred en masse to the specific regions and employers most in need of laborers at the moment of the DPs arrival. Representatives from the Wisconsin DPC and from the

USES even suggested that farmworkers admitted through this mechanism should be relocated repeatedly to coincide with different region’s seasonal demands for agricultural

51 Glenn E. Brockway, Regional Director, Region X to E. L. Keenan, Deputy Director, December 1, 1950, 5, Government Departments – Department of Labor, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; A.W. Motley, “Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, 2, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP; Joe Mow to Mrs. Abuschinow, November 4, 1992, given to author by John Backer, Church World Service; United States Displaced Persons Commission, Final Report, 92, 195, 271. And for “tremendously delighted,” Rosenfield to Elliott, August 3, 1949, quoted in Genizi, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 117.

52 Genizi, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 117.

324 laborers. Coupled with intensified occupational screening in the camps and stronger mechanisms binding DPs to their government or volagency-assigned jobs once they arrived, this mass-scale use of blanket assurances would transform the DP program into a labor placement scheme that more closely resembled guest worker programs, which was precisely the goal of its advocates.53

The Kalmyks’ resettlement differed from this proposed method because Brethren

Service intended to resettle the Kalmyks permanently, rather than create a class of migrant agricultural workers. Yet because the Kalmyks were resettled as a group, because they entered the United States after the advent of the Oath of Good Faith (and had it used against them when they attempted to leave their initial placements), and because they were not given assigned jobs until after they arrived, the Kalmyks’ resettlement, more than other migrations under the 1948 law, most closely resembled this proposed method for resettling refugees.

It is unclear if the Kalmyks’ resettlers explicitly thought of this resettlement as a trial run for this method. However, we do know that the U.S. DPC Commissioners, even after the agency dissolved, continued to advocate for the transformation of U.S. resettlement procedures so that in future migrations, there would be a more widespread use of blanket assurances, heightened occupational matching and more extensive orientation programs. They directly consulted the legislators who crafted the nation’s second refugee act, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. Passed just a year after the Kalmyks entered the United States, this law included the latter two measures, but banned the use of

53 A.W. Motley, “Milwaukee Conference on Displaced Persons,” November 22, 1950, 5, Gov. Depts. – Labor Department, Central Subject File, General Records of the Commission, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, RG 278, NACP.

325 blanket assurances. The fight for it continued, however, and the blanket assurance system soon came to predominate, and it remains to the present day. Kalmyk resettlement, in a sort of way, became the unexpected precursor of future resettlement practice.54

54 “Agenda Paper (Based on Previous Conference), Subject: Special Immigration Legislation,” 1952, 4, Legislation, 1952, Subject File, Records of the Legal Division, General Records, Records of the Displaced Persons Commission, 1948-1952, RG 278, NACP; Refugee Relief Act of 1953, Pub. L. No. 83-203, 67 Stat. 400 (1953); Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 48.

326

CONCLUSION

Another Labor of Refuge

Many texts on refugees begin by explaining this fundamental distinction between refugees and immigrants. Refugees are “involuntary migrants” while immigrants are

“voluntary migrants.” Refugees do not leave their home countries because they want to, but because they are forced to. Immigrants, on the other hand, leave purely by choice.1 In reality, the distinction is not so clear. There are a range of political, economic, social, environmental, structural, and personal circumstances that compel people to im/migrate.

Yet refugee law addresses only a small sliver of these circumstances. In order to enter the

United States as a refugee, a person must prove that they left their country of citizenship due to persecution or the well-founded fear thereof, and this persecution must be on account of race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion.2 Persons who leave due to other kinds of persecution, other kinds of violence, or other conditions of

1 Zucker and Zucker, The Guarded Gate, xiv.

2 These requirements also apply to asylum seekers, who are persons who apply for refugee protection after entering the United States, not before.

327 desperation are not, according to the law, refugees. They may indeed have a well-founded fear of struggle or even death upon return, but if their death were to be caused by other factors—for example, generalized violence, famine, or poverty—none of the outstanding reasons for their migration would be treated as valid grounds for special consideration under refugee law. They would instead be treated as any other immigrant. Assuming they meet all other requirements, they would then be subject to an interminable wait time, often decades or more. They may not be excluded outright, but they are excluded in practice.

As narrow as this framework is, the on-the-ground reality of refugee admissions is even more restrictive. The United States has never administered refugee admissions in a neutral manner. Before 1980, 99.7% of persons admitted into the United States were fleeing communist regimes.3 Persons fleeing U.S.-backed regimes still face little chance of admission, and those fleeing regimes opposed by the U.S. government are admitted only in small numbers. The asylum system (meaning the system for granting refugee status to persons who are already in the United States) is notoriously strict, difficult to navigate and suspicious of asylees. The majority of applicants are rejected. Deemed

“fraudulent claimants,” the assumption is that they fabricated their claims in order to migrate to the United States for economic reasons. If conservative immigration reformers have their way, such persons will be forever barred from applying to enter the United

States, even as regular immigrants.4

3 Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 124.

4 Federation for American Immigration Reform, www.fairus.org (accessed November 20, 2012).

328

This dissertation argues that when the U.S. refugee resettlement system first came about during the years after WWII and in the early Cold War, refugees were treated as laborers and refugee resettlement was treated as a labor placement project. Refugee resettlement was envisioned this way, legislated this way, and administered this way.

Rather than at odds with refugee policy’s other attributes and aims (for example, its moral veneer, its religious structure, its geopolitical imperatives, etc.), its construction as a labor migration was enmeshed in them. While last persons to enter the United States under this law arrived in mid-1952, more than sixty years ago, the structures developed to administer the 1948 Displaced Persons Act formed the foundation of the resettlement system as we know it today. U.S. refugee resettlement is still based on sponsorships by private organizations, mostly religious groups, and the placement of refugees in low- income jobs remains a normalized and primary focus of the endeavor.

As I finish this dissertation in November of 2012, it is expected that the United

States may enact major immigration legislation in the next several years. It strikes me that the existence of refugee policy—a body of policy that purports to admit persons on a moral or humanitarian basis—enables the continuation of a regular immigration system that does not consider such concerns. The problem, of course, is that refugee policy has never functioned this way in practice. It is restrictive, discriminatory, narrow, and insufficient. And as this dissertation has demonstrated, even when refugees were admitted into the United States, they were treated as cheap labor. There is real geopolitical and ideological work, however, in the U.S. claim to have a body of immigration law that somehow functions outside of the national interest. This project probed the economic bearings of a realm of policy whose moralized and American

329 exceptionalist veneers function to uphold the continuation of a policy—regular immigration law—that is unabashedly designed solely in the national interest and that dehumanizes and criminalizes most im/migrants. As such, I end this dissertation by calling for something that is as basic as it is radical: the need for an immigration system that better accounts for the range of circumstances that compel human migration, including structural and economic violence; that respects and prioritizes the human and civil rights of non-citizen subjects, including the right to migrate; that functions in its resettlement component in the spirit of what its admissions claim; and that does so not on the back of American exceptionalism and not in the service of U.S. imperialism, but in repudiation of it.

330

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