#immigrant aid

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, ca. 1946.

Photo: Sonia Handelman Meyer via the Jewish Museum

[16thstreet]

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: Its Organizational History and Internal Historiography

By Elizabeth Hyman, former Assistant Processing Archivist, HIAS Archives Project; current Photo & Reference Archivist, American Jewish Historical Society

Over the course of three years, in a project funded by HIAS in partnership with the American Jewish Historical Society, archivists at AJHS will organize, describe and make available to the public more than a thousand boxes of historical administrative files (primarily 1955-1990s). These files document the work of HIAS staff and lay leadership as they fulfilled the HIAS mission to rescue and resettle refugees and migrants. In addition, this project includes the creation of a database of clients who registered with HIAS between 1955 and 2000; it is  accessible via a search screen, through which former HIAS clients, genealogists and family members are able to determine whether HIAS holds restricted case files on specific people. Learn more at the HIAS Project Page: http://www.ajhs.org/hias-home.

HIAS Letterhead from the 1952 Annual Report

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, is an amalgamation of the many Jewish immigrant aid societies which operated between about 1880 through 1950—from the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States, to the crises in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa before, during, and after World War II.

HIAS, in its official reports and publications dating from 1911 onward, claims to have been founded in years ranging from 1870 to 1884. An Annual Report from 1911 set the founding date at 1888, while an annual report from 1914 gives 1908-1909. Documents from 1948, 1954, 1959, and 1964 all claim 1884 as the founding date. Yet, 1884 does not correspond to any identifiable late nineteenth century Jewish aid organization. HIAS presently—according to their website—uses 1881 as their founding date. 

The HIAS Archives team—tasked with processing the last 60 years of HIAS’ institutional archives—looked back through our records, along with the earlier HIAS records in the custody of the YIVO Institute, and secondary sources, to determine the veracity of these dates. Through our research, we determined that 1882 is the most accurate date of the organization’s founding; our conclusion is corroborated in historian Mark Wischnitzer’s Visas to Freedom: the History of HIAS.

To arrive at this conclusion, we had to look very closely at the immigrant aid societies formed by (primarily German) Jews to receive the ever-increasing numbers of their Eastern European coreligionists. And the picture which emerged from our research is not of a singular organization working to aid new arrivals, but an ad-hoc collection of groups, quickly forming and merging and re-merging in response to the unique challenges encountered by the new arrivals. The earliest of these organizations was the first Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, established in 1870. The Russian Emigrant Relief Committee was established in 1881, and the second Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society formed out of said organization later that year. The Hebrew Emigrant Auxiliary Society—which Wischnitzer refers to as “the nearest approach to a parent organization of HIAS”—was founded in 1882.[1]

HIAS continued on, absorbing related immigrant aid organizations in Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia. In 1927 it joined forces with the Jewish Colonization Association (the JCA and/or ICA), and the Jewish Emigration Committee of Europe, known as Emigdirect, to form HICEM. HICEM acted as HIAS’ international arm, and was instrumental in their work conducted during the Second World War.

After the war, HICEM dissolved, and individual overseas HIAS offices took over the complex task of resettling the Jewish survivors and Displaced Persons of Europe, and later, of the Middle East and North Africa. In 1954, HIAS merged with the United Service for New Americans (USNA), and the Migration Department of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to form the United HIAS Service.

Today, it is simply “HIAS.”

[1] Other organizations founded in this period Hachnosis Orchim in 1889—which changed its name to the Hebrew Sheltering House Association in 1907; and the Voliner-Zhitomer Aid Society in 1902, which quickly changed its name to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. In 1909, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society merged with the Hebrew Sheltering House Association, calling itself the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society.  

[spiritarcher]

I am doing a sketch fundraiser! You can DM me on here or go to my Instagram @ otherrealm

[tearsofrefugees]

Op-Ed: The facts on immigrant aid according to Trump - So very wrong

President Donald Trump is an Internet troll - and he loves keeping the country in turmoil with endless tweets used primarily to stir up his base with mindless false statements taken from dubious third-party Twitter accounts.

President Donald Trump is an Internet troll - and he loves keeping the country in turmoil with endless tweets used primarily to stir up his base with mindless false statements taken from dubious third-party Twitter accounts.

[mystlnewsonline]

WASHINGTON | AP FACT CHECK: Trump spreads false claims on immigrant aid

WASHINGTON | AP FACT CHECK: Trump spreads false claims on immigrant aid

WASHINGTON  — President Donald Trump is spreading a false claim from supporters that people who are in the United States illegally receive more in federal assistance than the average American gets in Social Security benefits.

Everything about the tweet he passed on to his 56 million listed Twitter followers Tuesday is wrong.

In a tweet of his own, Trump sketched an overly simplistic portrait of…

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[immigrationnewsdigest]

"One year ago, we said we had an obligation to help these children who flee unspeakable violence and today I am proud to announce that we have. Too many children who escaped horrific conditions are facing unequal access to lawyers across the country," said Mark-Viverito