WASHINGTON HAD HIS
OF COURSE, HE ONLY
WAR AT A TIME"

©1975 HERBLOCK

For the Record

From an editorial in the Boston
Globe:

A Peruvian Marxist named Hugo Blanco was not among the speakers recently at Boston University's conference on repression and resistance in the third world. Despite a favorable recommendation by the U.S. State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has refused to grant the waiver necessary for a Communist to receive a temporary visa to come to this country on a speaking tour. And so, once again, our country, which prides itself on the dissenters who made up its founding fathers and on a Constitution that guarantees free speech, is closing its doors to a recognized spokesman for freedom and dissent.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, or the McCarran-Walter Act as it was known when it passed over President Truman's veto in 1952, lists 31 grounds for visa ineligibility. These range from personal histories, past or present, of insanity, indigence and prostitution to such vague concepts as "known or believed to be" prejudicial to the public interest or a threat to national security. Anarchy, totalitarianism and communism are included under item 28 of Section 212-A of the code, as is advocating the overthrow of government by force or violence.

This was the section applied against
Hugo Blanco, an admitted Communist who
has dedicated his life to organizing
peasant unions in Peru and Chile...

The McCarran Act is a relic from the worst of our witch hunting days. It is so inclusive and awards such arbitrary powers to administrators in the Justice Department's Immigration Service that it should be treated as a joke. Rather than seeking individual waivers under an archaic statute, the Congress should set to work change the law itself.

ERS TO THE EDITOR