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Economic capacity

Properties2
tags
aliaseseconomic absorptive capacity, economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals

3 min read

Summary

The limit the June 1922 White Paper sets on Jewish immigration to Palestine: immigration “cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals”, with the further conditions that immigrants not burden the people of Palestine as a whole or deprive any section of the present population of their employment (British Policy in Palestine — British White Paper of June 1922, line 41).

Details

  • The White Paper presents the limit as a condition of fulfilling the Balfour Declaration policy: the Jewish community must be able to increase by immigration, but only up to the country’s capacity at the time; it states that immigration hitherto — about 25,000 since the British occupation — has fulfilled these conditions (line 41).

  • Regulation is to be conferred on by a special committee consisting entirely of elected members of the new Legislative Council, with differences between the committee and the Administration referred to His Majesty’s Government (line 45).

  • The White Paper gives no measure, figure or test for the capacity it names; who is to judge it, beyond the committee-and-referral arrangement, is not stated in the file.

  • In Simpson’s 1930 report the Jewish Agency’s Memorandum on industry, as quoted by Simpson, rejects the test for industry outright: “from the point of view of Industry the whole talk of the absorptive capacity of the country is out of place and should be disposed of once and for all”, it is Jewish immigration itself that creates the home market, and “The absorptive capacity of the country, from the point of view of industry, is dependent only on the willingness and ability of Jewish capitalists to start industries which they may understand and the products of which they can market, and of Jewish labour to come in and work.” (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 2547-2569)

Where sources disagree

  • The Mandate for Palestine, confirmed the following month, states the parallel duty without the economic-capacity test: the Administration shall facilitate Jewish immigration “under suitable conditions”, while ensuring the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced (Article 6, Mandate for Palestine (1922), PDF p.9). The two texts are held side by side; neither glosses the other.
  • Simpson answers the Agency Memorandum from the Government’s side of the test: an industry that cannot compete once the imported capital that supports its workers is spent is no basis for immigration, the manufactured-export totals for 1927-1929 (£426,983, £426,160, £482,826) do not show very rapid progress, and attracting capital to doubtful industries to justify more immigrants would be “a bad, and might prove a fatal policy” (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 2587-2617). The Memorandum’s position and Simpson’s are held side by side.

British Policy in Palestine — British White Paper of June 1922, Mandate for Palestine (1922), Jewish National Home, British White Paper of June 1922, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development

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