REFUGEES: Toward a New Understanding

Pushed, pummeled and applauded during his tour of the Camp Kilmer refugee depot last week, Vice President Nixon was asked by a newsman: “Doesn’t the fanfare make it difficult for you to get at the facts?” Answered Nixon: “If the fanfare and publicity help at all to increase Americans’ understanding of the refugees, then it’s served a useful purpose.”

The Administration banked on that understanding as it undertook a far-reaching mission: to persuade Congress to approve as swiftly as possible sweeping changes in immigration laws. By broadening existing legislation, easing the strait-laced requirements of the McCarran-Walter Act, the U.S. would be able to admit not merely 21,500 Hungarian refugees who fled their country’s October uprising, but worthy thousands of anti-Soviets who escaped Iron Curtain countries earlier, and have been waiting in pitiful refugee camps abroad for a chance to enter.