Immigration problems for Jewish refugees
The difficulties of emigrating to the United States as a Jewish refugee in the late 1930s
A very popular country where European Jews tried to find refuge was the United States. From the Anschluss onwards, Jewish people in Vienna began to line up at the US consulate to apply for an immigration visa. The issue was that the Austrian immigration quota to the United States was very small. This led the United States President at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to combine the US immigration quotas for Germany and Austria in order to increase how many Austrians could obtain an immigration visa. This increased the number of visas per year to a maximum of 27,370 for immigrants born in those countries. Although this seems like a lot, by June 30, 1938, nearly 140,000 people were on the German quota waiting list for US immigration visas (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sep 12, 2022).
This led to the Evian Conference in 1938. Representatives from 32 countries, including the U.S., gathered in Evian-les-Bains, France, to discuss the growing refugee crisis. While some countries, including the U.S., expressed sympathy, they did not expand their laws to admit more immigrants. By September 1938, 220,000 people were on the waiting list for a German quota visa.