Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1935-08-01 · 8.1935 · p. Seite 443

13. The system of joint investigation by the officials of the Jewish Agency and those of * the Government Department of Immigration in preparation for the schedule was inaugurated on a limited scale in connection with the schedule of April, 1934. It has since developed more fully and now covers practically every phase of economic activity surveyed. While the system has helped to remove a number of misconceptions on both sides and has no doubt played its part in reducing the gap between the figures of the Jewish Agency and those of the Government, it has not brought about the result for which the Jewish Agency had hoped. There still remained a wide discrepancy between the application submitted by the Jewish Agency, mainly on the basis of data ascertained in the process of the joint inquiry, and the estimate approved by the Government. General reasons were given for the drastic reduction, such as the fear that some of the works in respect of which immigration permits were applied for might prove to be of limited duration, that there might be difficulties in housing the immigrants, or that a crisis might be brought about either by causes connected with the economic position of Palestine or by wider international issues. The exact calculations, however, which led the Government to curtail the Jewish Agency's estimates have, in spite of repeated representations, never been disclosed. Even if the progress achieved is taken into account, the position as regards labour immigration remains substantially unsatisfactory. The case of the Jewish Agency for an increased labour immigration as it now stands can best be summarised by the following quotation from its last schedule memorandum dated March 12th, 1935 : The Jewish Agency submits that the accelerated pace of development which has been maintained now for nearly three years calls for a more fundamental re-adjustment of the Government's standards of measuring the country's absorptive capacity than has so far been manifested in the labour schedules granted, much as it appreciates the rise in the recent allocations. The expansion of the last three years has not been a boom phenomenon : it has opened an era of fundamental transformation in the economic structure of Palestine. Fear lest its estimates might exceed the absorptive capacity should no longer be allowed to determine the policy of the Government in the face of the repeated under-valuation which experience has proved. The Jewish Agency makes a renewed earnest plea, to which further weight has now been added by another half year's experience of labour shortage, that Government should grant a schedule of a size that would give free scope to Jewish development in Palestine, which is the main pivot of the country's progress and the only hope of the Jewish people. 14. During the period under review a change took place at the head of the Government Department of Immigration, which brought in its wake a change in the organisation and working methods of the Department. The defects of the former system which had been the subject of longstanding criticism on the part of the Jewish Agency were due, on the one hand, to excessive centralisation and consequent delay in dealing with new applications, and on the other hand, to unnecessarily arbitrary use of the Director's discretion. These shortcomings were soon remedied. 443