Summary
The half-yearly schedule, prepared under Regulation 8 of the Immigration Ordinance, fixing how many working-class (Class C) immigrants may be admitted to Palestine; Simpson’s 1930 report describes its preparation in detail and argues it must be set by unemployment generally in Palestine, not by Jewish unemployment alone (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 2715-2745, 2989-3027).
Details
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Twice a year the Jewish Agency presents a memorandum of the men and women it considers will be needed for new employment; the Chief Immigration Officer considers it against information from the Director of Public Works, the Palestine Railways’ General Manager, principal employers and the General Federation of Jewish Labour, tabulated as Jewish unemployed plus those whose employment will cease (C) against additional labour required by large and small employers plus a Reserve (G); if G exceeds C the difference is recommended to the High Commissioner. The Reserve is 300, at the Chief Immigration Officer’s disposal for special cases (lines 2715-2735).
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Once approved, certificates are reserved for approved private employers and for workers found in Palestine without permission, and the remainder, less the Reserve, is placed at the Agency’s disposal and sent in blank to its representatives abroad, duplicates going to British passport and consular officers (lines 2737-2755).
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Simpson’s rule for the Schedule is that the Government must look on the country as one unit: it is wrong to admit a Jew from Poland, Lithuania or the Yemen to fill a vacancy while workmen already in Palestine capable of filling it cannot find employment. His one exception is Derived demand — labour imported for permanent work created by simultaneously imported Jewish capital, ideally against a security fund (lines 2989-3001).
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Travellers who stay on without permission are counted against the Schedule, which Simpson notes does “a certain injustice to the Jewish immigrant outside the country whose place is taken”; the report states the numbers of such cases as 2,400 in the year ending 30 June 1928, 3,400 in the following year and 2,000 in that ending 30 June 1930, that is to say 7,800 in the last three years (lines 2807-2815).
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In May 1930 His Majesty’s Government suspended the Schedule then in force. That Schedule had been prepared in the ordinary way and sanctioned by the High Commissioner, and Simpson records no doubt that the Chief Immigration Officer’s recommendations and the High Commissioner’s decision were justified by the prospects of work at the time; cancelling the suspension, in the economic position of mid-1930, he holds an unjustified risk on purely economic grounds (lines 3015-3025).
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He proposes the Schedule be prepared jointly by Agency and Immigration Department representatives, with outside commercial figures such as the Jerusalem managers of Barclay’s (Overseas) Bank and the Anglo Palestine Company in council, agreed items signed by both parties and disagreed items submitted separately to the High Commissioner (lines 3023-3027).
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The Jewish Agency’s July 1930 immigration memorandum describes the machinery from its own side: it submits schedules to the Government twice a year, after examining labour-market prospects for the coming period and openings on new development works, the factors being new investments by colonising and credit institutions, new agricultural undertakings, new undertakings in industry, construction and commerce, and Government works allowing a fair share of Jewish labour; its safeguards against unforeseen events are its legal one-year maintenance guarantee for every immigrant and its moral responsibility to the Jewish people, held sufficient to justify greater freedom for the Agency in regulating immigration (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.90-92).
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The same memorandum quotes the Immigration Ordinance, 1925: Regulation 7.(4) allows the Palestine Zionist Executive to apply for entry of named or unnamed persons with a one-year maintenance guarantee, and Regulation 8 has the Chief Immigration Officer prepare each schedule after considering the Executive’s proposals, for the six months ending September 30th and March 31st, subject to the High Commissioner’s written approval (PDF p.96).
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The October 1930 statement gives the Government’s own account of the May 1930 suspension: further certificates beyond the 950 already sanctioned for the half year to September 1930 were suspended, other forms of Jewish immigration undisturbed, pending examination of the control system and determination of future policy; the suspension is held fully justified by the examination and by the Shaw Commission’s opinions on land shortage and closer control — not by political considerations — and the Schedule’s future preparation must depend on ascertainment of the total of unemployed in Palestine, towards an agreed Schedule reached by closer consultation between the Jewish authorities and the Government (Palestine: Statement of Policy by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, lines 329, 335-343).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Economic capacity, Derived demand, Jewish Agency, The Arab Worker under the Palestine Mandate