Argentina's immigration policy during the Holocaust, 1938-1945

"Senkman analyzes Western immigration policy as it pertains to the great wave of refugees, many of them Jewish, fleeing from Europe between 1933 and 1945, with a special focus on Argentina. Argentina rejected the Jewish refugees, a policy that was translated into immigration restrictions beginning in 1938 as a result of a general reaction against unwanted foreigners, also among them “ideological” Spanish refugees. The fear of communist subversion added to the nationalistic view that only Catholic and Latin immigrants were assimilable, to the pretension of a need for agricultural immigration only, and to the negative image of the Jew in public opinion, resulting in the denial of asylum to Jewish refugees."