Browsing by Author "Walters, Kathryn Perry"

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    20,000 Fewer: The Wagner-Rogers Bill and the Jewish Refugee Crisis
    Walters, Kathryn Perry (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-11)
    In the fall of 1938, Marion Kenworthy, child psychologist, and Clarence Pickett, director of the American Friends Service Committee, began designing a bill that would challenge the United States's government's strict immigration laws and allow persecuted children to come to the United States and live in American homes. The Wagner-Rogers Bill, named for Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts and introduced in February 1939, sought to allow the entry of 20,000 refugee children from Germany. At the time, multiple domestic factors limited the willingness of American politicians to meet this problem head on: high unemployment rates after the stock market crash in 1929, an isolationist sentiment after the impact of World War I, and xenophobia. These factors discouraged the lawmakers from revising the quota limit set on obtainable visas established by the 1924 Immigration Act and allow outsiders into the United States. These few actors who supported the Wagner-Rogers Bill reflect a hidden minority of the American public and political body that fought to help Jewish refugees by standing up to the majority of citizens and politicians against higher immigration into the United States, and the story of the this Bill demonstrates what might have been possible and illuminates 20th century models of American humanitarianism and its role in creating international refugee protection.
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    American Immigration and Refugee Policy Throughout the Holocaust
    Walters, Kathryn Perry; Wright de Hernandez, Anthony (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2020-03-19)
    Guest speaker Kathryn Perry Walters discusses American immigration policy throughout the Holocaust, specifically focusing on refugee practices. The United States government’s role in the Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 1930s and 1940s is a contested historical subject. This talk elaborates on existing debate by examining the proposal of the Wagner-Rogers bill and the creation of the War Refugee Board to analyze the methods in which the United States government approached refugee assistance. It provides background on where today’s anti-foreigner attitudes evolved from and how refugee need had been downplayed, but also how it had been fought for, and demonstrates Americans’ role in international human rights protection.