811.111 Colleges 62/46
The German Embassy to the Department of State
Aide-Mémoire
St. Dep. A 16
In a note dated March 26, 1931—811.111 Colleges 62/37 [42]—this Embassy has been informed by the Department of State that for the current year 1931 the United States Government has decided to discontinue the admission of foreign students who hitherto entered the United States under previous agreements as so-called student-laborers. Mention was not made, however, of those students who were already in this country, having entered legally in previous years, in accordance with the agreement.
It was understood from the agreement concluded between the Honorable W. W. Husband, Assistant Secretary of Labor, and Dr. Reinhold Schairer of the German Students’ Cooperative Association that the United States Department of Labor would be willing to grant permission that student laborers, selected under the control of the “Wirtschaftshilfe der Deutschen Studentenschaft”, come to this country in order to work here in American plants, mines, farms or other similar enterprises as laborers for a period not to exceed two years, and as a two years’ visé was not possible, the Department of Labor would be helpful in extending this permit here in the U. S. of America up to two years.
Since that time these German student laborers have regularly been granted the extension by the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island.
Recently, however, the 29 students named on the enclosed list,70 whose first year expires on April 22 and May 9, respectively, were refused a prolongation, upon presentation of their applications to the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island.
This unlooked for decision has caused the persons involved considerable anxiety, who came to the United States with the assumption that the customary permission for a two years’ stay would be granted them and who made their plans accordingly, since it necessarily entails most serious hardships for them.
The German Embassy would be greatly obliged to the United States Government if the decision of the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island were to be reconsidered and the extension in question granted.
- Not printed.↩