NASH:

Today is January 24, 1974 and I am visiting with Mr. William Fleigleman who is an Immigration Judge for the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service here in the New York District. We have just gotten through watching a number of cases and Mr. Fleigleman was presiding and now we are going to find out how it happens that Mr. Fleigleman got to where he is in the Immigration Service. How did it happen that you first joined the Immigration Service?

FLEIGLEMAN:

It was fortuitous. I joined the Immigration Service in 1942, and I am a product of the economic situation that existed at that time. The period of the '30s and '40s is before your time, but I think your father perhaps will recall to your mind that it was a Depression Era and lawyers and engineers worked at what would be considered coolie wages today. The government represented a certain opportunity and I was offered a position with government, which at the time suited my purpose. I took it without any fixed idea of remaining for any extended time, rather the contrary. The War interrupted my career. I went overseas in 1943. I returned in 1946 and the practice that I had had not been loyal to me as I had been told they would be, and it didn't surprise me that they had sought other lawyers. And I was married and thought I would rejoin the service for a short period of time until I made other plans and became immersed in work which was challenging, interesting, the salary level kept moving up, and so year followed year until here I am some thirty two or thirty three years later about at the end of a career.

NASH:

I would like to know about your experiences at Ellis Island. Did you ever work at Ellis Island?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I was at Ellis Island for a number of years. I forget when it was closed down and I forget exactly how many years, but I was at Ellis Island for a period of time and I do recall some of the physical and other highlights of the Island.

NASH:

What year did you start there and what exactly did you do there?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Well, 1942, it so happens. Let's see, did I go over to the Island? No, I did not go over to the Island for any extended period of time in '42. I think I was there for a short time in connection with the detention of enemy aliens. If you remember, or if you read history, which is probably more likely in view of the fact that you are rather young, we did pick up enemy aliens, which included Germans who were here, we did intern them, the Japanese. And until we could remove them with a diplomatic exchange, some of these were diplomats, some of them were housed at Ellis Island, and I had a semi-intelligence function in connection with reading mail, which was expected. And our interned Americans had the same thing done to them. We looked for intelligence information so that I devoted myself to that function until I went into the Army in 1943.

NASH:

Did you do that at Ellis Island?

FLEIGLEMAN:

At Ellis Island, yes. They were detained at Ellis Island and we had quarters set aside. I did understand German to some extent and pretended not to, which was a corny technique which is used by every nation. I used it in Army too in order to hear what you shouldn't be hearing, but, of course, the device that a person uses to counter that tack is to insult you. I remember in the Army I went through a prisoner of war camp, and in order to make sure I didn't understand German, I was roundly cursed and insulted in German, and since I didn't turn a hair, it was obvious that I didn't speak German, although I understand it, and by virtue of that bit of obvious information, I was then able to learn of intended escape which we were able to counter, of course.

NASH:

This was in the Army?

FLEIGLEMAN:

That was in the Army, and I did the same thing on the Island and picked up a little bit of information here and there.

NASH:

Do you recall any particular little bits that you were able to...

FLEIGLEMAN:

Well, there were amusing things that happened. There was a plot and counter-plot. I recall a chap by the name of Gerald Bishop who was there and I think he was a member of the Bund. I recall another fellow by the name of Walker Desquever, and I think he was there as a detained enemy alien and I think he came from Alsace-Lorraine, and he was technically German but he and Bishop hated each other intensely and tried to hurt each other through me so that when I entered every morning one or the other would be at me to explain what the other had been doing during the night, and they had an amazing intelligence system of their own because although they were without access to the outside, they had amazing information as to what was going on. I would be told by one or the other that the Commissioner was coming to the Island, etc., or Gerald Bishop would come to me with bits of a torn letter which he said he had fished out of a toilet bowl which revealed that Walker Desquever was doing something horrible, etc. It was semi-kid stuff and quite serious too. So that the period of time during which I was doing so-called intelligence work was not too significant, too meaningful to you I suspect. I went in the Army in '43, went overseas, was there about three years and I came back about '46 and I returned to the Island, but then I returned as Chairman of the Board of Special Inquiry which was a judicial body which I headed of three officers devoted to the hearing of applicants for admission to the United States, who had come before an Immigration inspector who had, so to speak in the language of the statute, some reason to doubt the admissibility under the laws which were both qualitative and quantitative, designed to exclude aliens because perhaps they were medically infirm or criminally undesirable, or perhaps they exceeded certain quota restrictions, etc. An officer who had reason to doubt the admissibility could hold an alien or a suspected alien, because he might hold a person who stated he was a citizen, suspecting him truly to be an alien. But the actual exclusion from admission and deportation could only be accomplished by an order of the Board of Special Inquiry, headed by the Chairman. That has changed and the function of the Board of Special Inquiry has been absorbed by the Special Inquiry Officer who is now known as Immigration Judge. Titles have changed, but I did that work and have done it virtually without interruption since about 1946. And I had some cases which still occupy certain memory cells which you may or may not be interested in. I don't know what particular type of case would interest you.

NASH:

Well, I would like to go back to that original period in 1942, was it?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Yes.

NASH:

I would like to know, what exactly were your duties, what kind of contact did you have with the people who were detained there?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I might examine packages coming in to see whether they might be contraband. I have always been occupied with hobbies. I am an excellent electrician, plumber, carpenter, photographer, most anything that one cando with one's hands, I can do, so that I examined things to see perhaps whether contained within a cake might be a bomb.

NASH:

Did you ever find anything?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I found weapons coming in, or potential weapons coming in,in shoes, a knife perhaps or a knife blade concealed in a shoe, a razor blade concealed in the heel of a shoe, which could be demounted.

NASH:

And what were those weapons to be used for, do you think?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Well, I could visualize, as you would, to be used as a device perhaps for escape, but there was nothing significant in that period really.

NASH:

Did anyone ever try to escape while you were there?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Yes, they tried to escape, but I don't think there were any successful escapes, but they tried to escape.

NASH:

Could you describe one such?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I don't recall any details of escape. That would have been in hours when I was not on the Island because we had a guard force. I was not part of the guard force. I don't think that there would be anything that I could offer that is significant in that time, unfortunately. I wish I could, but then I'd be fabricating.

NASH:

Did you have a lot of occasions to talk the people?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Sure. Of course. Intelligence comes out of conversation. By the same token, conversation is a means of gaining intelligence for the person who is interrogating so that they were using conversation with me, I assume, in an effort to milk me. Obviously, one or the other in such a dialogue is being used. Hopefully, I was not used but was using.

NASH:

How did they hope to use you? To gain what?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Perhaps information as to a means of departure from the Island. I mean you can use your own imagination as to what a person in prison would be using conversation for in talking to a person who is part of the prison complex, so to speak. And I can visualize nothing more than the means to escape. Or perhaps intelligence as to just what our coast defenses might have been on the theory that I might know coast defenses, but as I say, I would suspect that I was not used successfully for that purpose.

NASH:

Did they ever have political activity at Ellis Island?

FLEIGLEMAN:

In the sense that a person like Gerald Bishop would be propagandizing, I think, in terms of whatever the German-American Bund stood for. The breakdown of the morale of this country and the thought that the welfare of the United States lay not with Great Britain, but with Germany. The Japanese spoke to me in terms of the legitimate rights of Japan to seek means of survival, which were hers as far as the Japanese were concerned, so that one would perhaps break down the will of the person in this country to resist Japanese. That's always so. I had the same thing during the war. I recall vividly in France when I ran a prisoner of war camp, being told by some of the prisoners who had some activities in terms of serving the GIs, that one day we would be at war with Russia. And of course, this was the effort to separate the Americans from the Russians. Try to resist. Of course, there came a time when the Cold War did break out. I doubt that the remarks were made by people who were gifted in knowledge of what would come to pass, but was being made more in terms of divide and conquer. But this is always so.

NASH:

Did you ever have any special reactions from the Nazis who were, well, let me ask you first, are you Jewish?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I am of Hebrew background.

NASH:

Did you ever have any special reactions from the people who were Nazis at Ellis Island because of that?

FLEIGLEMAN:

No, no.

NASH:

Well, it must have been very difficult working as a hearing officer than working as a...

FLEIGLEMAN:

Different duties, but stimulating. I try to do everything in terms of getting the most out of it. During the war I did many things. I did intelligence work. I also taught fingerprinting and weapons assembly and disassembly and I ran the battalion, etc. As I say, the very fact that I tell you I am a hobbyist should indicate that I try to do whatever I am doing with a certain amount of thoroughness, and life has always been a challenge to me, even to the point of trying to ascertain how one could most quickly fingerprint people or most quickly tie a shoelace. I have that type of mind.

NASH:

How had the function of Ellis Island changed from the time that you were there in 1942 until the time that you returned there later?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Basically it had not changed. It had been used as a place of processing and as a place of detention. The primary work in the early years was at Ellis Island with an offshoot at what was called the Barge Office, B-A-R-G-E [sic] which was simply a staging area for immigration inspectors to go out into the Bay to meet incoming ships to inspect them. But the office work primarily was done at Ellis Island, the place of detention of aliens who were detained because of the compulsion of the law, was Ellis Island. It was ultimately closed down because it was a very expensive installation in that the operation of the ferry, if I remember, cost approximately a half a million dollars so that the district office moved to the mainland and then, of course, detention became a different situation. It was comparatively easy to detain at Ellis Island. There was plenty of space. It was a little harder after that.

NASH:

Well, what about the nature of the people who were detained? I imagine that must have changed.

FLEIGLEMAN:

Well, yes. In the '40s the flow of aliens was out of war-torn Europe. You had the refugee tide, you had thousands of people coming out of the Nazi prison camps with stops in France, with stops in Vienna, with stops wherever. They were temporarily housed so that you had a very active flow of refugees. In recent years, of course, the tide has changed, and I would say in this area the largest stream of aliens now are coming to us out of Latin America. And in '42, of course, the war years were upon us and there was not too much traffic. In '46, '47, '48, had thousands, tens of thousands of refugees coming, and at that time every day brought me cases of people who apparently had been recognized aboard a ship which was taking thousands of people out of Europe to the United States, as recognized as "The man who murdered my husband" at such and such a camp, or "The woman who ran a prison camp and whipped me," and etc. This was inevitably so. Every ship brought somebody who had been recognized, it was said.

NASH:

Was it ever documented?

FLEIGLEMAN:

In some instances I found that the accusation was correct. In most instances, I found it was a figment of imagination. But the passion that was aroused was immense, and it required a great deal of deviousness to break through to the true memory because once the person had been recognized, the image was fixed, and the person recognizing the so-called murderer, of course, would raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth and say no mistake, I mean that's the man. So I had to use many devices to make sure that this was not a fixation. END SIDE ONE

NASH:

And how did you go about finding these things out?

FLEIGLEMAN:

Well, I used whatever imagination I had. I recall one case in which the prime witness wouldn't even look at the alien who was supposed to have been the number three man in a prison camp who led detainees to the gas chambers, and I said, "Will you look at him?" And the woman said, "I can't look at him. I can't, I can't, I can't, but I know him." Now obviously, that is a faulty identification, so I said, "Well, you recognized him on the ship?" "Yes." "How did you recognize him?" "Oh, I remember that blond head and how he cocked his head on the side. And anyway, there were two other people who were on the ship." "And what are their names?" And I got the other two people and one said, well he wasn't sure, but the other one said, "Yes, I remember him. I look him in the eye and I remember him clearly." And I said, "Have you got good eyesight?" "Oh, absolutely." "And how do you remember him?" "I used to watch him every day lead those poor prisoners to the gas chambers and I remember how he cocked his head, and look at him, he is cocking his head that way." I said, "Look at him carefully now. This is a human life that may be in the balance." The chap said, "I know, I am under oath, and I certainly wouldn't want to make a mistake because I treasure a human life." And he looked at him and said, "I remember him, that's so." And I said, "Well, how far away were you usually?" And he said, "Fifteen, twenty yards," I forget just what it was, but some such figure. I said, "Let's go outside the hearing room and I'll station you at about the distance and you look at him and you tell me." And I did and he hesitated, looked at him, and he was obviously trying to show me how careful he was, and he said, "That's the man." I said, "I'm still not satisfied. If we put the matter over for twenty-four hours, would that interfere with your memory?" "I'll never forget him", he said, "The rest of my life." So I said, "We'll put it over for twenty-four hours and I'll give you the same chance to identify it." Of course, pretty obvious to you what I did the next day. I came in and at random I found an alien who was sitting for a different type of process, though did not look like the chap who was identified except that he was blond and approximately the same size, and I simply had him change jackets with the person who had been identified and I placed him in exactly the same area that he had been, that the alien had been identified and I asked him to do only one thing. I said, "Hold your head at a cocked angle." Little bit, wasn't too appreciable, but a little bit. And then I took the witness and I said, "Now remember you identified and I want you to forget that you did because you know the seriousness of the accusation, and pretend you had never seen him and look again." And I placed him a little bit further away this time than he had been the day before and I said, "Look at him now, is that the man?" He looked for about three minutes and he said, "That's him." I said, "Now come a little closer and make sure," and I said, "Oh, suppose every five steps and tell me, you know, and I want to know at what point you recognize every detail." And he came a little closer and said, "Yes, that's him." And he came within five feet, and this was a man who had said he had great eyesight, came within five feet of the man and then he turned to me in fury and he said, "You fooled me, you fooled me." That was the point at which he recognized that he had been duped. I said, "Alright, wait outside." Now the fact that he had been mistaken did not discount the fact that he might have recognized him so that although it was my function to shake him to ascertain whether or not it was a false identification, it was also my function to make a case of it existing. So without him I continued to interrogate the accused alien as to where he had spent his time in Europe, taking from him from country to country to ascertain whether there might be discrepancies in his story, and I think I was questioning him for about fifteen minutes when suddenly the door literally burst open and the accusing witness dashed through and he did what I might say was a Fred Astaire slide on his knees, if you will remember, if perhaps it was not before your time, some of the pictures Astaire did in which he might slide across the ballroom floor on his knees. He did literally such a slide from the door to the desk which I presided and screaming, "Judge, kill me, kill me." This was the accusing alien, accusing witness. So I said, "Get on your feet and stop screaming 'kill me.' What is the problem?" And he said, "I have done the most terrible thing and I deserve death." I said, "What have you done?" He said, "Do you know who this man is?" I said, "You've told me. He is the man who murdered many people or had them murdered." He said, "No, no, no, I was wrong." I said, "Why were you wrong?" He said, "I was sitting on the bench outside talking to his relatives," I think he had an uncle there, "And I discovered that the uncle was a man," and the witness was of the Hebrew faith, the accused alien was not. I think they were Polish, etc., he said, "The uncle was the man who saved my family from death. He hid them in his barn. This man couldn't come from such a family." Now I made a decision in favor of the accused alien. Not on the basis of he couldn't come from such a family, but on the basis of my own interrogation, etc. But this was a case for whatever it was worth that I had in about 1946, '47. There was another interesting case you might be interested in. If you remember, or maybe once again, I don't dare to ask how old, but I assume you have no memory of those times, there was a GI Bride Act. I think it was Public Law 271, which was passed by the Congress in order to facilitate the coming to the United States of aliens who had married GIs, who had served us abroad. Out of that service came wartime marriage and Congress wanted to cut through the delay in the bride, although really although there was a GI Bride Act, since we had WACS in the Army, they brought male husbands under the GI Bride Act. But normally it was the females coming because we had more males in the Army than females, and to cut through the visa issuance process. And one case comes to mind. We received a telegram from someone living in Chicago saying, "Stop so and so who is coming to the United States on such and such a ship as my bride. I am a GI but she is not my wife. I divorced her." That telegram was passed over to the people who did the inspection of ships, and when the ship arrived she was detained for a hearing before me so that I might ascertain whether she came within the ambet of the law, whether she could be admitted as a GI bride, and these were formal hearings. A person has the right to counsel and a person has a right to defend himself. And the person that sent the telegram came in from Chicago and he was a GI but left over, if I remember, from World War I, and this was his wife. He had divorced her. She was coming to the United States bringing his and her sixteen year old child. I think the child was born shortly after he departed from Europe, had been conceived but not born. And the child had never seen the father, and he produced a matrimonial decree dissolving the marriage on the ground of his wife's desertion. Now, obviously, that was a fraud. She certainly had not deserted him. He had come to the United States to make his fortune with the intention, I suppose, of then bringing his wife, which was not an unusual pattern. At that time many people came from Europe, a lot of Italian men came and then brought their wives, from every country. She, apparently, had never been informed that he had divorced her. He had decided he wanted this child. He had written to her, told her come and bring the child, and then had sent the telegram, "Stop the woman." I suppose fearing it he had said, "I divorced you," she would never bring the child. She was rather stoic. She was a peasant, showed no emotion, and I said to her, "If you wish, I will parole you into the United States," which was not the granting of status, but the granting of freedom of movement within the United States, "And you may consult with an attorney in an effort to set aside the divorce on the ground that it had been fraudulently procured." She said, "No, if he doesn't want me, I won't force myself upon him." I said, "Now, as to the child, I assume you want this child to stay with you and I can under the law, since she has been in your custody, see to it that she goes back with you." She said, "That's up to my child." The child had been beautifully brought up, soft hands, well dressed. The mother had care worn hands. I am sure she scrubbed many a floor, and obviously worked hard. The child was better dressed than she was. She said, "Whatever my child wants." I said to the child, "Would you like to think about it overnight?" She said, "Judge, may I?" I said, "Sure." So I adjourned the hearing the next day we convened, and I said to the child, the father was there, the mother was there, I said, "Have you made up your mind?" She said, "Yes, I want to go with my father." I said, "Leave your mother behind?" She said, "I would like to live in America." I thought that was a rather cruel and insensitive thing for a child to do, but I said to the mother in the hope that perhaps I could retain the child for her, I said, "Do you want to permit her to do that?" And she said, "If my child wants to do that, it's alright with me." And once again, no tear. There was no joy in the voice, but it was a matter of fact thing. I said, "Under the circumstances I will admit her." And I did and turned her over to the father and I said, "I have the sad duty of excluding you from admission and ordering you returned to your own country. You have the right to appeal, but under the circumstances, an appeal won't do you much legal good because there is no basis for admission unless you want to be paroled and set aside the divorce. She said, "No, I don't want to be paroled in." So I excluded her. The next morning I came in, the first thing I was told was during the night she had hung herself. So that she was not quite as stoic as she appeared to be. This had broken her heart. That didn't end the matter because around noon the ferry came in and the father came marching in without the daughter and said to me, "Judge, I want you to help me." And I was upset. This was a beast of a man who had divorced the wife on the pretense of desertion, who had used her to bring the child over to take from her the only thing that was left to her of the marriage. But I retained my emotion and I said, "What do you want?" He said, "I think the Army has to pay for a trip of my daughter to Chicago and I went to them and they said no, they are not obligated to pay, and I want you to call them up, Judge, and tell them to pay." That was the only time I audibly and visibly lost my temper because I said, "If you don't get out of here I'm going to kick you down all the steps," and so help me, I would have. That was the last I heard of him. It happens. What else can I tell you?

NASH:

Well, let's hear a happy one.

FLEIGLEMAN:

A happy one. I can tell you of one which demonstrates that identity is a very difficult proposition. I remember one chap, young boy, who came to this country and was identified by a chap by the name of Sam Auerbach, who was a fantastic investigator, as being a stowaway, he remembered from another ship. Sam spoke very well I think at least twelve languages, and broke up many smuggling rings from Canada by entering Canada, pretending to be an alien of a group that was busy paying to be smuggled in, speaking the language beautifully, and breaking up rings. He was a very brave man. I think he wrote a book when he retired. I hope he is still alive, gentleman. In any event, Sam came to me and said, "This chap, I think I have a memory of his having been a stowaway on another ship and I have a photograph of that chap," and he said, "You know that the earlobes are identifying characteristics," and they are just as fingerprints. Not the same, with the same reliability, but earlobes tend to identify a person. So I looked at the picture and he looked at the picture and then we circled the young man, looking carefully, and we both agreed that there was a remarkable resemblance, but it was not the man. So we adjourned the matter because he had claimed to be a citizen born I think in Wisconsin. I was waiting for his birth records to come to me, and before those birth records came, I got a message from one of the guards saying the gentleman, the young man wanted to see me. I had him brought before me and I said, "What's your problem?" He said, "Judge, that man was right. I was a stowaway on that ship." So here we had both agreed that the photograph was not the photograph of the chap. So if you read stories about so and so, I had read a recent story of someone having been identified as a rapist and someone else turned up who was a remarkable look alike, then a third man turned up and confessed, and I looked at the newspaper photograph and there was a remarkable resemblance. The identification factor is a remarkably inaccurate way of identifying people. Memory factors come into play, emotional factors come into play. It is not a particularly happy event maybe, but it happened. I am trying to remember happy events. I remember a whimsical one, not too happy perhaps. Some ship came in bearing people who were supposed to have been citizens who were stranded abroad or citizens for some other reason, and several cases were detained for inquiry as to whether or not they were citizens. I remember one chap, young man who was detained, and in interrogation the subject came up of parentage, and he was supposed to be the son of a person who was a citizen here by virtue of the status if he was this person's son he could have gained entry. Not as a citizen, but as an alien. And then in interrogating I learned or thought I learned that the purported father had left the country from which the young man came, where he was born, some six or eight years before the child was born. And I said, "Now, when did you say you left?" And he repeated. "And when did you say this boy was born?" And he repeated. And I said, "That's a six year differential," and he said, "That's right." And I said, "I think the biological fact that it would be impossible for the child to be a product of your sperm cells, etc., simply conception certainly doesn't occur that way." And he said, "I read about that, but if my wife says that is my child, that is my child." He wasn't going to demean the woman. He knew very well what the score was, but he wasn't going to demean the woman by doubting the parentage. It was a great loyalty.

NASH:

Do you remember the last days at Ellis Island? Were you around, at least when it was used for detaining people?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I remember, but there was nothing significant. That was, I suspect, the last days of Ellis Island were like the first days. It was simply a transition of personnel and records, etc. There was simply nothing too significant about it. Ellis Island was a fairly pleasant place to be. There was always a morning trip on the ferry, and then an evening trip, so that if you were wound up tight, I mean there would be a certain relaxation as the ferry went. It wasn't too pleasant when the fog was present. We had no radar and we hooted our way through the ship traffic wondering when we were going to run into something or something was going to run into us, but it was a nice place to be and a more leisurely pace. We are certainly much more productive now and the whole immigration pattern is much larger. I remember there were two or three employees taking care of the actual deportation function and we probably have thirty or forty doing that now. I remember one employee, a bit of humor, who was in charge of the records section of the Island. I don't remember his name, an elderly gentleman, and I used to have some relationship to him to get files, and I found there was no rhyme or reason to where files were kept, and I discovered in talking to him that was deliberate. Nobody was going to do him out of a job because so long as there was no pattern to where he kept files, he could never lose his job. That is as whimsical and happy as I can be with Ellis Island. Anyplace of detention is inevitably the scene of unhappiness rather than happiness. I remember one case of a woman who turned her husband in as being illegally here and he was brutalizing her and they picked him up, came before me for a hearing. While the case was still in process, back she came and she said, "Judge, won't you have him released. I am so afraid to be alone at night." And he was released and she had him picked up again because he was brutalizing her. This happened four or five times. She was using the Immigration Service as a means of keeping her husband in line. The last time she had him picked up was because she said he knifed their child. And I asked him whether this was so. He said, "Oh no Judge, it was an accident," and he showed me graphically what happened as if he were holding a knife, and he said, "I was reaching for the bologna with the knife and she put her arm in the way." Well, I didn't know whether it was so or not nor did I care at that point. I decided she was going to be lonely at night. That was as far as we were going.

NASH:

In other words he was a legal alien?

FLEIGLEMAN:

He was an illegally resident alien, illegally resident alien, who was seeking to legalize his status. There have always been methods by which an illegally resident alien under certain circumstances could legalize status. And detention is normally for people who cannot be trusted to report for hearings or whatever is necessary. That is what the function of any detention, temporary detention, is, and that's all that was, you see. And we weren't going to let him roam around if he wasn't to be trusted, and obviously if he was brutalizing his wife she might not then be inclined to fill out certain papers which would help him become a legally resident alien, and if she wasn't, then, of course, he might want to flee, so that was the reason for detention you see.

NASH:

What changes do you predict for immigration laws in the future or would you like to see?

FLEIGLEMAN:

The only thing I can predict is that they will perhaps become more restrictive because the immigration laws were brought about by either the wish to keep this country homogeneous, if you can call it that. As far as the national origins are concerned, we have done away with that to large extent, or the wish to keep out of this country those who would lower the intelligence level or achievement level because they were of poor stock, they were mentally afflicted. You have qualitative standards so that the mentally afflicted are barred. Those who have certain dangerous, contagious diseases are barred from coming. Those who have committed certain crimes are barred from coming. Those who wish to bring this country to its knees, so to speak, by force and violence, and I am not speaking words of art, but descriptively, are barred of coming . Those who are convicted of narcotic violations are barred from coming. These are the qualitative standards in order to make this country worth living in, theoretically. Then you have also the wish to preserve the economic welfare of the residents of the United States. As soon as person comes here he becomes enthusiastically a supporter of a law which will prevent anyone else coming from that area so that he can make a good living in the United States, so that the labor unions have sought to limit the coming to the United States of more than an absorbable amount of people, and we now have Section 212814 of the law which requires that the Labor Department certify that the coming of an alien to the United States will not adversely affect the working conditions in that area or that he is not becoming a non-absorbable portion of this country. And so there is always an up and down. And then, of course, you get some farmer who needs cheap labor who is enthusiastic about bringing certain Mexicans in, etc., so there is this clashing, continual clashing between those who are here who want to make sure they have a job, those who are here who don't need a job in that industry and want to bring their relatives here, those who perhaps desperately want domestics, the domestics here who want to raise the wage scale in an effort to keep out other domestics. I would project that this will continue to be so. There will always be a movement afoot to limit the number of people coming here until we reach a time when all the countries of the world are economically secure, if that time will ever come, when there is no longer a threat to the economy. Right now the migration pattern from Latin America where the economy is poor, is vast and we don't get people illegally migrating from Germany, from Switzerland, from France. Employment has been good there. From Italy where employment has improved, although Italy still givings us a number of people. But we do get large groups coming from Guyana, from Colombia, from Chile, and, of course, the rise and fall of dictatorships, the loss of freedom, the loss of dignity, the human dignity always brings a tide. As Cuba has changed from one pattern of dictatorship to another, we have had an influx. As Haiti has changed we have had an influx, etc.

NASH:

Are there any special provisions being made for the people of Chile as a result of the coup there?

FLEIGLEMAN:

I don't think there are any special provisions. Every case is on an individual basis. A person who can establish that his return to a specific country would subject him to persecution because of race, religion, or political opinion, can secure a stay of deportation, withhold of deportation on that ground, if he can establish it. But that is individual to him, not on a general basis. The general conditions may help him prove his case, but most people I suspect in Chile are not too concerned with who is in power. They are only concerned with how they're eating. They are not involved politically and that is so in most countries.

NASH:

Once people come here, they do have the right to send for their relatives under certain cases. Well, not send for them...

FLEIGLEMAN:

They don't have a right to send for them. Every person coming here, they must apply for a visa for permanent residence. Now, under certain circumstances he gets certain preferences or priorities because of certain relative ties, but these are not absolute and he still must meet the qualitative features of the law. The Congress has legislated in order to help family groups come together, but with limitations.

NASH:

It has been very interesting speaking with you and thank you very much.

FLEIGLEMAN:

I hope I have furnished some material that is really interesting and that the remark you made is not a platitude. I endeavor to help.

NASH:

It has been fascinating.

FLEIGLEMAN:

It has been my pleasure. END OF INTERVIEW