Office of the Historian

315.3/5–2153

Memorandum by the Administrator of Security and Consular Affairs (McLeod) to the Under Secretary of State for Administration (Lourie)

Washington, May 26, 1953.
  • Subject:
  • Memorandum from Ambassador Lodge, accompanying his letter of May 21, 1953,1 regarding otherwise excludable aliens coming to the United Nations.

The following comments are offered on the memorandum above mentioned:

1.
The Government of the United States has no desire to exclude aliens coming to the headquarters district of the United Nations, except upon the security grounds specified in the Immigration and Nationality Act. That Act specifies thirty-one general classes, some of which are subdivisible into a number of subclasses, of aliens who are ineligible to receive visas and are excludable from the United States at our ports of entry. Only three of these classes are applicable to some of the cases of aliens coming to the United Nations. (See Sections 102 and 212 (a) (27), (28), and (29) of the Act.) None of the other twenty-eight categories of excludable aliens are generally applicable to aliens coming to the United Nations. Congress has spelled out in the Act what it meant by the security reservation contained in Section 6 of the Joint Resolution of August 4, 1947 (Public Law 357) approving the [Page 284] Headquarters Agreement. (See Senate and House Reports on the Immigration and Nationality Act.)
2.
On the question whether the standard of evidence should be “clear and convincing”, as suggested in Ambassador Lodge’s memorandum, it may be pointed out that the Immigration and Nationality Act and the previous law specifies that visas shall be withheld if the responsible consular officer “knows or has reason to believe” that a visa applicant is ineligible to receive the visa. This obviously does not envisage the necessity of any concurrence by the Secretary of State or the Secretary-General of the United Nations. However, the Secretary of State will exercise his general administrative supervision over all phases of the work of our consular offices to see that they do not act arbitrarily or otherwise abuse their authority.
3.
The re-definition and delimitation of the area to be known as the “immediate vicinity” to the Headquarters District of the United Nations is now under consideration by the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security, which is considering a possible delimitation as the Borough of Manhattan in the City and State of New York, excluding therefrom any airports or docks, wharves, or piers.
4.
The remaining portions of the memorandum involve questions which should be considered and discussed with the Attorney General before any conclusion is reached.

Scott McLeod
  1. Supra.↩