Letter from Nathan Cowan to President Harry S. Truman

FILED BY MR. HOPKINS JUL 9 1952 Congress of Industrial Organizations CIO x170 718 Jackson Place, N. W. Washington 6, D. C. Office of LEGISLATIVE EXECUTIVE 5581 REPRESENTATIVE 133 June 13, 1952 HR5678 5678 Con The President C The White House Washington, D.C. ARCHIVES NATIONAL TRUMAN AND RECORDS SERVICE Dear Mr. President: During recent weeks we have been gratified to note that the American public is gradually becoming aware of the meaning and content of the McCarran Immigration bill and is registering its opposition to it. We are also happy to note that a substantial number of Senators are now on record as opposing the bill. Unfor- tunately their number was not large enough to prevent its final passage. We are opposed to the McCarran bill not only because of the many injustices of the present law which it perpetuates, but even more because of the many new injustices which it adds. In the latter category are many loosely drawn and unnecessarily harsh provisions for exclusion, deportation and denaturalization. We find it significant that the McCarran bill is chiefly supported by those who generally attack most vociferously the concentration of authority in the executive branch of the Government. Here they suddenly change their position and are willing to grant to minor officials in the Immigration Service and the Consular Service vast new unreviewable powers over the lives of millions of human beings. We are particularly concerned with the possible impact of these new unlimited powers on the labor union movement. An Adminis- tration hostile to labor could easily use these vastly expanded powers to punish or intimidate labor union members or labor union leaders of foreign birth even though they are naturalized citizens. It is a fact that much more limited powers under the present law have been used for that purpose by anti-labor Administrations in the past. The power to denaturalize for new, technical grounds and to deport for reasons which need only exist in the mind of an Attorney General, or one of his many assistants, could, in the wrong hands also be used as a club against sponsors of progressive legislation.