Haven for 60,000

One morning last week 126 bearded, bedraggled men in faded overalls and cheap suits crowded round the door of La Guaira's Interior Ministry. The night before, just 42 days after leaving Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, they had disembarked from the tiny, 75-year-old schooner New Adam to the Venezuelan shore and a new life in the new world.

None of the newcomers had papers to show the authorities. They were illegal immigrants. They had left Spain and the Canaries because they needed work and probably, though they would not talk about it, because they were anti-Franco. Each had paid...

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