The United States Displaced Persons Act

Origins and purpose

President Truman had pressed Congress for displaced persons legislation since his State of the Union message of January 1947, without result. The bill that finally reached him, S. 2242, passed on the last day of the session. He signed it on 25 June 1948 with what he called very great reluctance, calling it flagrantly discriminatory.3

His objection was mainly to the eligibility date. The Act defined an eligible displaced person as one who had entered Germany, Austria or Italy between 1 September 1939 and 22 December 1945 and was still in a western zone or sector on 1 January 1948. Truman argued that this excluded more than ninety per cent of the remaining Jewish displaced persons, and also Catholic refugees who had fled communist rule into the western zones later. He objected too to the reservation of at least 40 per cent of visas for people whose place of origin or country of nationality had been de facto annexed by a foreign power, and to the mortgaging of up to half of each country's future immigration quota.13

The Act's preferences were occupational as well as national. First preference went to displaced persons previously engaged in agriculture who would work in agriculture in the United States, and not less than 30 per cent of all visas were reserved for them. Second preference covered household, construction, clothing and garment workers, others needed in the locality where the person proposed to live, and people with special professional or scientific qualifications. Third preference went to blood relatives within the third degree. A study of the Act's passage records that it also permitted 15,000 individuals, primarily Jewish students, who had entered the United States before 1948 to remain.111

The legislative groundwork included direct inspection of the camps. In September and October 1947 congressmen visited 150 displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, noted that repatriation was nearing completion, and recommended an international conference to establish an interstate agreement, with the United States taking a leadership role.11

How it worked in practice

The Act created a Displaced Persons Commission of three members appointed by the President. The Commission wrote the regulations that governed assurances, investigated the character, history and eligibility of applicants, and reported to the President and Congress. It operated from the enactment of the statute until the programme closed in 1952.1

An assurance was a written guarantee, given under the Commission's regulations, that the person if admitted would be suitably employed without displacing some other person from employment, and would have safe and sanitary housing without displacing another person. Under the 1950 amendment the applicant also had to swear to accept the terms of that employment before a visa could be issued. Truman called these prior assurances niggardly conditions.123

Processing happened in occupied Germany and Austria. The IRO ran an emigrant staging area at Bremen, where index cards were filed for every displaced person emigrating, over 500,000 of them between 1946 and 1952, alongside language lessons and orientation for the destination country. In the British zone the barracks at Wentorf Resettlement Centre were an emigration camp from 1948 to 1951 under IRO administration, holding as many as 12,000 people at times. In the American zone the Funk-Kaserne in Munich was the resettlement centre where those preparing to leave completed their medical examinations: a Ukrainian family at Bad Aibling was authorised at the end of September 1951 to move there for medical screening and final departure to the United States.18910

Ships sailed from Bremerhaven. The first, the United States Army transport General Black, left on 21 October 1948 and reached New York on 30 October; the preserved passenger list carries 819 names with age, marital status, nationality, occupation and religion. IRO press releases through 1949 and 1950 named the arriving ships, the passengers' nationalities and professions, the states where they would settle, and the voluntary agencies assisting them.5

That last item explains why the United States never opened reception camps. The IRO paid for the Atlantic passage, but organisations such as the National Catholic Welfare Board and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society took the new arrivals from the port of entry to their destinations and provided the housing and employment the Act required. Because admission depended on an assurance already in place, an arriving family had a named job and a named address before it landed. There was nothing for a reception centre to allocate and no contract to be served out in one: the work Bonegilla or a Canadian bulk labour placement did after arrival was done in advance by a sponsor and a voluntary agency.15

The Ukrainian experience within the Act

The Ukrainian population in the camps was large: over 200,000 Ukrainians remained in Germany and Austria by 1946, in a camp system of which about eighty camps were predominantly Ukrainian. Most emigrated across the Atlantic between 1947 and 1952, and the United States admitted the largest number.7

The United Ukrainian American Relief Committee made that possible for Ukrainians. Founded in 1944, it had sponsored some 33,000 incoming Ukrainians by 1952, out of the approximately 85,000 who entered under the Act. Sponsorship was not a formality: the committee had to find an American willing to guarantee a job and housing, file the assurance with the Commission and see it approved before a consular officer would issue the visa.6

The third wave differed from earlier Ukrainian immigration to the United States. It came entirely out of the camps in Austria and Germany, the majority from Western Ukraine, and it was literate, with many holding higher education. Its members arrived between 1947 and 1955 into established Ukrainian communities in the industrial cities of the north-east.6

What happened afterwards

Congress amended the Act on 16 June 1950. The amendment moved the eligibility date from 22 December 1945 to 1 January 1949, raised the displaced persons ceiling to 341,000, and added categories: 10,000 war orphans, 4,000 refugees who had fled to the Far East, 18,000 veterans of the exiled Polish Army then in England, 10,000 Greek refugees, 2,000 displaced persons in Trieste and Italy, and 54,744 refugees and expellees of German origin. Truman noted that the amended law authorised 400,744 visas in all, including the 172,230 issued up to 31 May 1950, and that the postwar victims of totalitarianism were now on an equal footing with earlier victims of Nazi aggression.24

The same day he signed an executive order designating the Commission to carry out the required investigations and reports on displaced persons and persons of German ethnic origin seeking admission. The Commission's term ran to 31 August 1952; the IRO was abolished the same year and its functions passed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.45

The obligations of the Act outlasted the voyage. An admitted person had to report their residence and employment to the Commission each year until four reports had been made, and under the 1950 amendment had already sworn to abide by the employment terms in the assurance. The entry had also been charged against the future immigration quota of the country of birth, up to half of that quota in any year.123

A doctoral study of the resettlement programme puts the total at nearly 395,000 displaced persons resettled to the United States between 1948 and 1952.12