The United States government did not prioritize the rescue of Jews and other victimized groups targeted by Nazi Germany during World War II.
In 1924, new, harsh quota regulations were enacted by the US Congress, limiting the annual number of immigrants from Europe who may enter the country. These criteria were frequently not met during the Nazi era, despite the fact that thousands of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied countries applied for admission to the US.
President Herbert Hoover urged the State Department to vigorously enforce the quota regulations once the Great Depression got underway in 1929, which made it exceedingly challenging for refugees to get immigration visas in the 1930s. Immigrants had to demonstrate they had the means to maintain themselves indefinitely in the United States and were not "likely to become a public charge." Despite the continuous persecution of Jews in Germany, the Great Depression's economic troubles had an impact on popular and governmental views toward immigration, which exacerbated antisemitism, isolationism, and xenophobia.
In addition to screening refugees for national security reasons once World War II broke out in 1939, American consuls overseas made the already challenging immigration procedure much more challenging. These kind of posters were printed.
Nevertheless, more than 50% of all immigrants to the United States in 1939 and 1940 were Jews, the majority of them European refugees. In the same years, the bulk of immigrants to the United States were from nations that were either occupied by the Nazis or collaborated with them. For instance, in 1940, 82 percent of immigrants to America were from these nations, the majority of whom were asylum-seeking refugees. However, the majority of European American consulates had been closed by the time the United States entered the war in December 1941, making it practically difficult for refugees to flee the continent. But from 1933 until 1945, more over 200,000 Jews sought asylum in the United States, the most of them arriving before the end of 1941.
US State Department Response to News of the “Final Solution”
Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress delegate located in Geneva, delivered a report to the State Department in August 1942. (WJC). According to the study, the Germans intended to kill all of Europe's Jews in person. State Department officials did not deliver the report to American Jewish Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was President of the World Jewish Congress, since they thought it was a rumor and felt that no rescue effort could be made even if the story was accurate.
Despite the State Department's resistance, Wise quickly obtained the report via British means and requested that the agency look into the claims. Rabbi Wise received Riegner's intelligence three months later, which was corroborated by Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. In a press conference on November 24, 1942, Wise said that Nazi Germany was carrying out a plan to exterminate all of the Jews in Europe. A few weeks later, on December 17, the United States, the United Kingdom, and eleven other Allies released a statement condemning Nazi Germany's atrocities and admonishing those responsible for them to face the consequences of their conduct.