“Wilbur Carr, the Imperial State Department, and Immigration: 1920-1945”
© Copyright 2011 by Kathy Warnes. All Rights Reserved.
kathywarneswriter.weebly.com, kathywarnes@gmail.com
The State Department, as it evolved in the first four decades of the 20th century through the work of a lifetime civil servant named Wilbur Carr, became a tool throughout the 1930s and through World War II to minimize immigration in general and the entry of Jewish refugees in particular. Officials insisted that consulates stick to the strict letter of restrictive U.S. laws passed in 1917 and 1924, with the result that the United States failed to fill even its limited immigration visa quotas as Jews tried to flee rising Nazi oppression and violence — about which those same officials were well aware. Even after World War II, the State Department pushed to send back to Europe those Jews who had reached America through the efforts of the War Refugee Board during World War II.
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