Displaced Persons Act
The Displaced Persons Act (also: Displaced Persons Act of 1948 ) was a US federal law that allowed displaced persons (DPs) to immigrate to the USA regardless of existing quotas for immigrants.
Background and story
After the Second World War, the restrictive immigration conditions in the US prevented Jews who had survived the Holocaust or who had fled Poland from the new pogroms from entering the US. They lived in DP camps in Germany, sometimes even in the former concentration camps, guarded and behind barbed wire. The existing immigration law of the Immigration Act of 1924 prevented Jews from finding refuge in the United States after World War II . This situation lasted for three years. The Displaced Persons Act, which was passed by the US Congress on June 25, 1948, finally allowed the immigration of up to 205,000 DPs over a period of two years. It was only enacted by the USA after the state of Israel was founded, so that a lower number of Jewish immigrants to the USA could now be expected. Now the DPs had the opportunity to emigrate to Israel, which they mostly used.
The regulation included not only DPs from the Second World War, but also people from other war zones, such as the Chinese Civil War ; 3,500 Chinese who were in the United States as visitors, sailors or students in 1948 were granted permanent resident status in the United States on the basis of the law .
Since the law initially disadvantaged Holocaust survivors, it was amended in 1950 ( DP Act of 1950 ). In 1952, about 80,000 Jewish DPs had immigrated to the United States under this law, mostly with the help of Jewish agencies in the United States.