23 Spring 2026 Some conservative Democrats and some of FDR’s allies also opposed increased immigration. Representative Martin Dies, a powerful conservative Texas Democrat, sponsored a bill to decrease all immigration by 60%. FDR loyalists in the House buried the bill in a committee, but there was no chance Congress would change the quota system to allow more immigrants. Dies was initially a moderate supporter of some New Deal legislation (although he would eventually break with FDR) who investigated Nazi and communist influence in the nation. Before 1936, FDR needed his support, and that of other conservative southern Democrats. Trying to increase immigration would have failed while possibly undermining the success of FDR’s many social and economic programs, which helped millions of Americans, including many unemployed Jews. Labor leaders staunchly supported the New Deal but generally opposed letting more immigrants into the country. With one in four American workers unemployed, bringing new immigrants would only exacerbate joblessness. While Jews were found throughout the federal government in the 1930s, they were noticeably absent from the State Department, which was the main engine of foreign policy and a key component of implementing immigration policy. Only one Jew, Laurence Adolph Steinhardt, served as an ambassador immediately before and during the War. A graduate of Columbia Law School (like FDR), he was close to the president but not a State Department insider. In the 1930s, he was the ambassador to Sweden and Peru and could not be a strong voice for Jewish refugees in Washington. During the War he was the ambassador to the Soviet Union and Turkey. While he helped some Jews survive through those positions, by then it was too late to save most Jews. Many career State Department officials and diplomats were “politely” antisemitic and enthusiastically implemented Hoover’s policy of slowly processing visa applications and rigorously (and often unfairly) rejecting applicants by asserting they would become “a public charge.” The aggressively antisemitic Breckinridge Long, who served in the State Department under Wilson and FDR, skillfully manipulated policy to prevent as many Jews as possible from entering the country. In the 1930s, he admired both Hitler and Mussolini. He was high enough in the State Department bureaucracy to impede Jewish immigration but just below the level where his activities were immediately obvious. When his antisemitism was finally exposed, he was forced to resign. Equally pernicious and antisemitic was Under Secretary of State (1933-36) William Phillips. A lifelong State Department official and a Boston Brahmin with many family connections to political leaders, he used his office to undermine Jewish immigration. At the end of his career, he would oppose the U.N. partition of Palestine that led to the creation of Israel. These and other State Department officials never discussed their antisemitism with FDR or his close advisors while they used their positions to quietly keep as many Jews as possible out of the United States. Thus, for the entire decade of the 1930s, only about a third of the overall quota for all immigrants was ever filled. While immigration from Germany grew during this decade, only in 1939 was the quota for Germany filled because FDR appointed a more forceful ambassador to Germany and replaced key State Department figures, including Long, with officials sympathetic to sanctuary for Jewish refugees. FDR’s first ambassador to Germany, history professor William Dodd, had no diplomatic experience, and had an “adversarial relationship with his Berlin staff,” which followed the lead of Long and Phillips.30 This grim history of the internal politics of American diplomacy illustrates the complexity of immigration policy. In his first term (1933-1937) Roosevelt was almost entirely focused on U.S. domestic issues and economic recovery. While concerned about German antisemitism, he also reiterated in his first annual message to Congress that “the United States cannot take part in political arrangements in Europe.”31 Moreover, while conditions for Jews in Germany became increasingly dangerous, mass killings of Jews had not yet occurred, and Hitler wisely tried to hide his policies and intentions. During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Germany downplayed its repression of Jews, hiding its policies from reporters, diplomats, sports fans, and others. In 1937, the administration ordered diplomats in Germany to relax impediments to immigration and more than 10,000 German Jews came into the United States that year, although this was less than 50% of the total quota allowed for Germany.32 30. Carl J. Bon Tempo and Hasia R. Diner, supra note 13 at 195; Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, supra note 18, at 59-70, 143, 164-92; Fred A. Bailey, “A Virginia Scholar in Chancellor Hitler's Court: The Tragic Ambassadorship of William Edward Dodd,” 100 VA. MAG. OF HIST. AND BIOG., 323, 338 (1992). 31. Supra note 18, at 80. Today this would be called the “State of the Union Message.” 32. Id. at 95.
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