ABSTRACT
United States’ immigration policy from colonial times to the beginning of World War II was relatively uncomplicated. To both public and policy makers all migrants were “immigrants” to be admitted or denied entrance. But the Russian Revolution and the rise of militant fascism in Germany and Italy rudely thrust the forced migrant onto the world’s consciousness. These migrants, who had been driven out of their homelands, were refugees; they were, in a crucial sense, different from would-be immigrants seeking opportunity in new homelands. This critical difference—the difference between those who are forced to migrate and those who choose to migrate—was not then recognized. But with the surrender of Hitler’s military, refugees, a phenomenon as old as human misery, were given a new name: displaced persons (DPs). DPs were the survivors of the Holocaust and others, expelled from or forced to flee their homelands, who could not return.
