L/UNA files, “Privileges & Immunities; Entry, Transit, Travel—1946.–”

Memorandum by Charles Runyon, Attorney Adviser, Office of the Assistant Legal Adviser for United Nations Affairs, to the Director of the Office of Security and Consular Affairs (Boykin)

Attached for clearance is the revised text of a letter to Justice,1 signed for the Secretary by the Acting Legal Adviser, which sets out the construction of the passport regulations under which consuls have in fact approved visas in cases of UN officers and employees lacking valid national passports, and which construction, as a matter of law and correct reading of the current regulations, is a correct construction.

You will recall that at a meeting in your office on Friday, February 29, you and Mr. L’Heureux, Chief of the Visa Division, agreed that the Department should transmit such a construction of its regulations for the guidance of the Immigration and Naturalization Service should the Department of Justice and the Service raise no legal objection and should they agree to act in accordance with the construction and to eliminate the practice of “detention and parole”. It was agreed at the meeting in your office that the correctness of the practice and construction involved would be confirmed to our Consular officials.

The present wording has been discussed with the Chief Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service2 and with Mr. Herzel Plaine of Justice and will be satisfactory to them. Justice has further [Page 208] reached agreement with us that in the cases referred to there is no bar to admission deriving solely from lack of evidence of future ability to gain admission to a foreign country, and this conclusion of law is specifically recited in the attached letter.

I realize that the Visa Division holds strong views to the effect that in most, if not all, cases of persons falling in categories (1)–(7) of the exceptions to “immigrant” status set out in 22 USC § 203 there should, as a matter of policy, be a showing of probable ability to gain admission to a foreign country. The present letter would make a specific qualification to such a policy only in relation to the officers and employees referred to in the second part of § 203 (7).

I trust that on the basis of the express limitations set out in this memorandum and embodied in the present letter itself, you will initial and approve the present letter so that we may formally confirm to Justice and Immigration the understanding reached with them and secure the elimination of the harmful and futile practice of “detention and parole” which in fact does not assure admissibility of aliens to other countries but does place it in the power of the Soviet Union and its satellites unjustly to penalize their nationals who work for the United Nations when those nationals lose favor with the Communist political machine.

The need for an immediate and effective solution of this problem, which was first formally presented to Justice in January of 1951, seems obvious, and is emphasized by the expected return to the United States of Assistant Secretary General Kerno of the UN on March 9. I understand that Mr. Kerno has not been granted a renewal of his passport by the Communist Government of Czechoslovakia.

  1. Infra.
  2. L. Paul Winings.