Trudeau's Speech On USA Tariff Plan

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Justin Pierre James Trudeau, 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, (born December 25, 1971), age 54,  is a Canadian politician who has been the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada since 2015 and the leader of the Liberal Party since 2013 when only 42 years old. A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Youth from 2015 to 2018

I just listened to Trudeau's speech and was absolutely spellbound.  He was the best speaker I have heard in a long time.  His voice was easy to follow, plain to understand, and I have been suffering from a deaf problem interfering with voices and their different ranges to hear.  His explanation of his reason for giving the speech made complete sense and what I really admired was the man did not refer to him or his greatness at all but just the situation.  No going off in the middle with ranting and telling us how nothing good has ever happened in the world except by being under his control.  No way.  Trudeau was an A+ great speaker.  

Now I want to know a lot more about Trudeau and Canada and we Jews.  How many Jews do live in Canada anyway and why did they move there instead of the USA?  According to the 2021 census, the Jewish population in Canada is approximately 335,000 people, representing around 0.9% of the total Canadian population.   According to the Pew Research Center, the Jewish population in the USA is approximately 7.5 million people, which represents around 2.4% of the total US population.  We have stood at 6 million for a long time.  

When fleeing Eastern Europe, Jews often chose Canada over the United States due to a combination of factors including Canada's more open immigration policies at the time, particularly during periods of heightened antisemitism in the US, a perception of greater tolerance, and the ability to settle in less densely populated areas with more opportunities for economic development, especially in the Canadian West; although it's important to note that Canada also had periods of restrictive immigration policies towards Jews, notably during the "MS St. Louis" incident where a ship of Jewish refugees was turned away. 

                                          St Louis still at the Port of Hamburg

The MS St. Louis was a ship that carried nearly 937 Jewish refugees, mostly fleeing Nazi Germany, from Hamburg to Cuba in May 1939, but was denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada, forcing the passengers to return to Europe where many were ultimately killed in the Holocaust; this event is a stark example of the difficulties faced by Jews trying to escape Nazi persecution during World War II when the Brits still held the 30 year mandate in Palestine and refused Jewish entry as well but were helping Arabs instead. I can see Canada going along with the British umbrella.  

While not "basically" a Catholic country, Canada does have the largest proportion of its population identifying as Catholic, with around 29.9% of Canadians identifying as Roman Catholic according to the most recent census, making it the dominant Christian denomination in the country; however, Canada is considered a secular state with a diverse religious landscape including other Christian denominations and non-religious individuals such as the Jews.   As of 2021, 4.9% of Canada's population, or 1,775,715 people, identified as Muslim. This is more than double the percentage of Muslims in Canada in 2001.  So already, the Jews are outnumbered in Canada by the Muslims with 

335,00/1,775,715 or  0.9%/4.9%.   

Trudeau is having his own problematic life in the political areas., but he is keeping that at bay when presenting a speech.  On December 16, 2024, Chrystia Freeland resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, hours before she was due to release the government's fall economic statement.  That had a big effect on Trudeau.  

Freeland's resignation came amid threats from the incoming Trump administration to impose 25% tariffs upon Canada, as well as Freeland's reported opposition to Trudeau's promise of $250 cheques to working Canadians who earned $150,000 or less in 2023. The resignation raised speculation as to the future of Trudeau's leadership, with renewed calls for his resignation emerging from Liberal MPs. The government's economic statement, released later that day, showed a deficit of $61.9 billion for 2023–24, exceeding the previous target of $40.1 billion or less, and left Trump's tariff threats largely unaddressed.  Has it ever occurred to anyone that Trump's actions could cause more nations  to have further problems than they ever thought?  

Oh by the way, Following the US government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939, near the time the Germans marched into Poland. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers:

• Great Britain took 288 passengers (maybe feeling guilty? 30 year mandate?
• the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers
• Belgium took in 214 passengers
• 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France.

Here's some of the speech below:  or go to https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-full-spech-trump-trade-war-1.7474451

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a speech Tuesday morning on Parliament Hill announcing Canada's response to a 25 per cent tariff U.S. President Donald Trump is imposing on most Canadian goods.  Here is a transcript of his remarks.

Today the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, their talking about working positively with Russia. Appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense. Canadians are reasonable and we are polite but we will not back down from a fight — not when our country and the well-being of everyone in it is at stake.

• Trudeau says Trump's 'dumb' trade war is designed to collapse the Canadian economy

• Trump tariffs, Canadian counter-tariffs now in effect as deadline passes

At the moment, the U.S. tariffs came into effect in the early hours of this morning and so did the Canadian response. Canada will be implementing 25 per cent tariffs against $155 billion worth of American goods. Starting with tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods immediately and tariffs on the remaining $125 billion of American products in 21 days' time. Today, we will also be challenging these illegal actions by filing dispute resolution claims at the World Trade Organization and through the USMCA. But in the meantime, our tariffs will remain in place until the U.S. tariffs are withdrawn and not a moment sooner. And should these tariffs not cease, we are in active and ongoing discussions with provinces and territories to pursue several non-tariff measures — measures which will demonstrate that there are no winners in a trade war.

Resource:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/04/world/video/justin-trudeau-tariffs-trump-speech-digvid

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis#:~:text=In%20May%201939%2C%20the%20German,were%20killed%20in%20the%20Holocaust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Canada#:~:text=Article,as%20of%20the%202021%20census.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Trudeau

1947 Palestine And All The People Living There: Life Before Israel's Birth

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Last Days of the 30 Year Mandate of the British in Palestine

If you were born in 1947, you are 76 years old.  Most young people have no idea of what was going on in Palestine then.  

For the past 1,877 years, from 70 to 1947 CE, the Land was ruled by foreign governments and never by the people who lived in it. 

In a span of  400 years, from 1516 to 1917, the Land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire by dividing it into separately administered districts called Sanjaks or Vilayets.  The Ottomans had no name for the Land as a whole. 

In the past 29 years, from 1918 to 1947, the Land was ruled by the British who called the Land Palestine which had been called this after the Jewish General "Aluf" Bar Kokhba took back Jerusalem in 132 from the Romans, held it for 3 whole years at the embarrassment of the Romans, then died in 135 in the great battle.  Rome was so mad that they named the Land for the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines.  

Originally, the 30 year British Mandate over Palestine extended to both sides of the River Jordan.  In 1922, Britain partitioned the Mandated territory into Palestine (west of the Jordan) and Transjordan (east of the Jordan.)  The Land in Hebrew is "Eretz Yisrael".  

                            Arab guerrillas

Hajj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) in 1921 was a big Arab leader, called the Sherif of Jerusalem and the Grand Mufti, appointed by the British, the only Jew-Sir Herbert Samuel, who also chose Husseini for chairman of the Arab supreme Council.   (Oy gavolt!)  He was afraid of losing his high position if Jews entered the country.  So he organized the Arab riots (nicely called 'the Palestine disturbances by the Brits).  For these, he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon, and during WWII, participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948's Israel birth, he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government " in Gaza-which moved later to Cairo, Egypt.  

During the 2nd half of the 19th century, both communities---Arabs and Jews---began to grow.  By 1914, the population of the Land (west of the Jordan) was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews.  

In 1917, in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort, the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.  However, the British had also promised Arab nationalists that a united Arab country, covering most of the Arab Middle East, would result if the Ottoman Turks were defeated.

The United Nations (October 24, 1945)  was an outgrowth of the League of Nations(January 10, 1920) . On 15 November 1920, 41 members states gathered in Geneva for the opening of the first session of the Assembly. This represented a large portion of existing states and corresponded to more than 70% of the world's population. A UN Special committee on Palestine composed for statesmen and jurists from 11 member states, recommended the partitioning of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States, linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem under international control.  Both times, the Nations voted for Israel to be created.  

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly approved this recommendation by more than the required 2/3 majority.  Both the USA and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. 

The decision of the United Nations was accepted by the Jewish Agency.  It was rejected by the Arab Governments and by Palestinian Arab leaders.  

The 6 months until the termination of the British 30 year Mandate were marked by Arab violence against the Jewish community.  The Arabs attacked to interrupt communications between Jewish towns and villages and, above all, to isolate and conquer Jerusalem.  

Prior to the entry of regular Arab armies into the Land in May 1948, not a single Jewish town or village was captured.  

The British authorities aided the Arabs by handing over to them military bases and equipment.  British officers led the Transjordan Arab Legion.  (The Brits were given the 30 year mandate with the command to help the Jews created their Jewish Homeland.)They saw it differently.  They kept Jews out and allowed Arabs in.                   

The main effort of the Jewish Haganah (meaning defense in Hebrew) was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem and beat back the Arab assaults on the new western city. This was a secret organization kept from the British for Jewish self-defense because the Brits were not doing it.  It grew out of Ha-Shomer in 1920 and existed until 1948. 

Intensive efforts to strengthen the Haganah followed the 1929 Arab riots which resulted in a British policy of appeasement of the Arabs.  In 1931, the Haganah split and the minority, chiefly right-wing groups, formed a separate organization;  these reunited with the Haganah in 1936 but certain elements remained outside and formed the nucleus of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi. 

      Avraham Stern (December 23, 1907-February 12, 1942, born in Suwalki, Poland-or Lithuania where my Bubba was born. When 18 in 1925, he migrated alone to Palestine. He died at 35.    

Avraham Stern (1907-1942) left the Irgun in 1939-1940 of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel.  The British called it the Stern Gang. My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was the Chief of Intelligence for it.  They carried out acts of sabotage, etc. Stanley was a writer; wrote "A Letter to the World." Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested. 

Stern spent the rest of the 1930s traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe to organize revolutionary cells in Poland and promote immigration of Jews to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions (this was therefore known as "illegal immigration").

Stern developed a plan to train 40,000 young Jews to sail for Palestine and take over the country from the British colonial authorities. He succeeded in enlisting the Polish government in this effort. The Poles began training Irgun members and arms were set aside, but then Germany invaded Poland and began the Second World War in 1939. This ended the training, and immigration routes were cut off. Stern was in Palestine at the time and was arrested the same night the war began. He was incarcerated together with the entire High Command of the Irgun in the Jerusalem Central Prison and Sarafand Detention Camp.  

The Haganah wasn't idle;  and was strengthened during the 1936-1939 disturbances by the establishment of the Supernumerary Police Force which number 20,000 in 1939.  This force was recruited by the Haganah command and operated as far as possible under its instructions.  

Major General Charles Orde Windgate In September 1936, Wingate was assigned to a staff officer position in the British Mandate of Palestine, and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty, and immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Palestinian Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities.  Too bad Britain didn't have his outlook.  

 Yitzhak Sadeh (Hebrew: יצחק שדה, born Izaak Landoberg, August 10, 1890 – August 20, 1952), was the commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

At this period, the "special Field companies" were raised by Yitzhak Sadeh and the "Night Squads" established by Charles Orde Wingate (1903-1944). Wingate was a British soldier.  While serving during 1936-1939 in Palestine, he organized formations of Jewish volunteers, known as the Special Night Squads, to defeat Arab terrorist activity.  A keen bible student, Windgate remained an ardent supporter of Zionism to the end of his brilliant military career.  Sadeh (1890-1952) assisted Trumpeldor in founding the Russian He-Halutz movement in 1919 and the following year settled in Palestine.  He became an Israeli labor and military leader. I taught with one of his descendants-a teacher of English in Safed in 1981.

 Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920) was going to be a dentist, but volunteered for the Russian army and lost an arm during the fighting in 1904-1905 while a Japanese captive.  He was made an officer and settled in Palestine in 1912.  During WWI he was in Egypt working with Jabotinsky for the establishment of a Jewish unit to fight with the British against the Turks in Palestine.  He helped raise the Zion Mule Corps but this was dispatched to the Gallipoli.  As an ex-Russian officer, Trumpeldor was excluded from the Jewish Legion.  In 1917, he went to Russia to organize Jewish settlement groups for Palestine and from his activity the He-Halutz movement emerged.  In 1919, he returned to Palestine as leader of a pioneer group and unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the antagonisms between the various workers' political parties inside the country.  He organized volunteers to protect exposed Jewish settlements in Upper Galilee and was killed in defense of Tel Hai. 

      Haganah 1942  

The Haganah also executed settlement operations  (Stockade and Tower), organized "illegal" immigration, and even set up its own secret plant for manufacturing equipment. 

The ship, St. Louis, was refused landing in USA in 1939.  The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.  As the M.S. St. Louis cruised off the coast of Miami in June 1939, its passengers could see the lights of the city glimmering. But the United States hadn’t been on the ship’s original itinerary, and its passengers didn’t have permission to disembark in Florida. As the more than 900 Jewish passengers looked longingly at the twinkling lights, they hoped against hope that they could land.

Most of the ship’s 937 passengers were Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. Though World War II had not yet begun in the USA, the groundwork for the Holocaust was already being laid in Germany, where Jewish people faced harassment, discrimination and political persecution. But though the danger faced by the passengers was clear, they were turned down by immigration authorities, first by Cuba, then the United States and Canada. For many on the St. Louis, that rejection was a death sentence.

The world’s refusal of the St. Louis’ desperate refugees was a death sentence for 254 refugees—approximately half of the number who had returned to the European continent in 1939. Many who did not die were interned in concentration camps, like Max Korman, who built on lessons learned on the ship to help organize inmates of the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands.

      Haganah 1946-1947:  The ship, Exodus 1947 was formerly the "President Warfield" which carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine under Haganah auspices.  It was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle in which 3 Jews were killed in July 1947.  The refugees, returned forcibly from Haifa to Port de Bouc, France, refused to land there;  in spite of their resistance they were disembarked at Hamburg, Germany by British soldiers.  The incident did much to swing world opinion against Britain's Palestine policy. 

In 10 months, Israel was born-May 14, 1948.  They died short of 10 months more and then they would have been in Israel.                                                     

      Haganah 1947 

In these conditions, Britain withdrew its last forces from Palestine on May 15, 1948. This ended the spell of more than 1,800 years during which the Land had been governed by aliens.  

1947 was the last year under such dictatorship.   

   Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/british-soldiers-deport-exodus-1947-passengers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Sadeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

https://www.history.com/news/wwii-jewish-refugee-ship-st-louis-1939

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Stern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Trumpeldor

DACA: Changing Attitudes Towards Immigrants and Who May Enter USA

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

   
Since about 2000, the USA, with a population this year of 326,474,013,  has noticed that arrivals of children from their southern border of Mexico,  population of 130, 222, 815, have been entering illegally with no border guards stopping them.  They've been coming by the busloads from ages 1 to 17, some of which have been pregnant.  Out of one batch of 764, 236 were Hondurans.  The number of recent illegals has reached 800,000.  That would be the population of 2 (two) Portland, Oregon made up only of children.  They have first come into Texas, and then bussed elsewhere in many cases to Arizona and California, for example.  This has put a great strain on these states economically and every other which way, especially on school districts who never have enough money to help their public schools as they were before illegals arrived.  Many have arrived alone and others with parents, all illegally.
                                                                           

"The three buses were trailed by a half-dozen news crews during the two-hour trip from the border to Murietta. After the buses were blocked, federal authorities rerouted the vehicles to a freeway and then to a customs and border facility in San Diego within view of the Mexico border."....."DHS (Dept. of Human Services)  grapples with the crowds streaming across the border from Mexico. Processing facilities that are supposed to screen immigrants for health, criminal history and legal status are reportedly so overwhelmed that they are sending illegal immigrants by buses and planes around the country, looking for places to hold them while they are processed.
                                                                                 

The DREAM ACT (Development Relief Education for Alien Minors) was a failed proposal in Congress on August 1, 2001  to deal with these children and parents.  The children involved are still being called THE DREAMERS.   It has failed ever since.  It was a breach in our immigrant policy to make an exception which did not involve a dire necessity such as being of refugee status.

But for the Jews, there was no exception.  Some attempted to enter from the ship, St. Louis. "On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially "stateless."

Back then, the USA had quotas.   "In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years."                                                                       
                                                                           

Children on St. Louis, a ship that was turned back
900 Jews were on this ship.
USA's population then was 130.9 million
Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 

I might add that Jews trying to escape Hitler's Germany in the late 1930's were not given any special status to enter the USA, either.  Other countries would not take in Jews because they weren't baptized, of course.  It wasn't even a kind way of showing their anti-Semitism in not accepting Jews.  Even a few ships that made it to the shore of the USA were turned back and the passengers were returned to face the ovens.   Now we have been receiving refugees from the Middle Eastern countries at war with each other, such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon along with illegals that have been entering from Mexico.  Mexico's illegal entrants have been diminishing with a change of policy and President Trump's plan of building a wall between the countries.  The dangers these children face in Mexico and Central America are the drug gangs that their countries cannot control.
                                                                       

The question about the DREAMERS centers around children born after June 16, 1981 who came to the USA before age 16.
They must be free of any criminal record.
They have been in the USA since June 15, 2007 and are attending school.

" DACA allows certain illegal immigrants who entered the country as minors, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit. This was created by " the Obama administration in June 2012." when he allowed busloads of children to be brought into the USA as illegals.  
                                                                     

Not all junior high students are grateful for the
education they are offered.
It takes a strong principal of a school to change behaviors 

"The policy was created after acknowledgment that these illegal students had been largely raised in the United States, and was seen as a way to remove immigration enforcement attention from "low priority" individuals with good behavior. The illegal immigrant student population was rapidly increasing; approximately 65,000 illegal immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools on a yearly basis.

From the start, the Pew Research Center estimated that up to 1.7 million people might be eligible. As of June 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had received 844,931 initial applications for DACA status, of which 741,546 (88%) were approved, 60,269 (7%) were denied, and 43,121 (5%) were pending. Over half of those accepted reside in California and Texas.^"

                                                                                                   

 

^{In November 2014, Obama tried to expand the program, but the involved states protested.} 

^{On June 16, 2017, the United States Department of Homeland Security announced that it}

 <sup>would rescind the executive order by the Barack Obama administration that expanded the
 DACA program, though the DACA program's overall existence would continue to be 
reviewed.  Trump became President on January 20, 2017, and now is facing a big decision he
must make about DACA; to send these people back or allow them to stay.  Part of his platform
was to follow the law of the land and  send them back.  

"</sup>U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. The Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the body of law governing current immigration policy, provides for an annual worldwide limit of 675,000 permanent immigrants, with certain exceptions for close family members.Aug 12, 2016

Reference:  https://unitedwedream.org/about/projects/deferred-action/

http://www.denverpost.com/2012/06/15/illegal-immigrant-children-brought-to-u-s-get-break-from-deportation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/child-migrants-surge-unaccompanied-central-america/
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/06/06/arizona-illegal-immigrant-children-brewer/10113105/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/02/protesters-in-california-block-busloads-of-immigrant-children-and-families/?utm_term=.ca974280a662
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/politics/children-immigrant-crossings/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/us/california-immigrant-transfers/index.html
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/01/30/1939-refugees-st-louis-manifest
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-united-states-immigration-system-works

Difficulties with Venezuela and Latin America Taking in Jewish Refugees in 20s and 30s.

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                              

Goldfoot, Robinson and Oster Fathers and children, c1945. 
The man on the right holding a little girl is my uncle, Werner Oster, who left Boppard, Germany
for the USA on May 4th, 1939 on the ship, Washington.They landed in New York on May 13th.
He was only 23, but was one of the last Jews to get out of Germany in 1939.
He had been a great soccer player in Germany.

He came to the USA, which was hard to do.  He had to have a sponsor (my great Uncle Max Turn,

who had to take all economic responsibility for him.)  Werner was single then.  A butcher and sausage maker, Max got him a job with my father, a fledgling in the business and 31 years old at the time. 

The picture shows that he married my father's sister and these children are my cousins.  I'm sitting on the 

grass of our back yard and am the oldest.  My father is behind me holding my brother. 

Nazism was not only threatening all Jews on this planet,  it was already starting to take lives in the 30s in Germany.  Some Jews, seeing the writing on the wall, sought out countries that would take them in.  Werner made it to the USA, but his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister died in the Holocaust.

It had been difficult to get into the USA if you were Jewish.  There was a bill in 1921 and another in 1924 to cut the numbers of Jews entering.  " The 1921 measure capped the number of immigrants allowed in at roughly 350,000 per year. It also established quotas from  individual countries, derived from their percentage of the U.S. population. This was a rigged system, as those percentages included how many Americans were descended from that group’s original settlers. Some nations therefore received unusually large quotas, despite minimal immigration in the few years before the bill’s enactment. If ten people had arrived in 1750 from Great Britain, the number of that original cluster’s descendants would be huge by the 20th century. The base year, moreover, was set back a decade to 1910 to exclude from the figures all those who had recently arrived from war-torn Europe after the sea lanes were safe again in 1918. It was not immigrants in general who were blocked, but certain nationalities and religions (JEWS).   Fiorello LaGuardia branded the 1924 act “the creation of a narrow mind that was nurtured by a hating heart.”  We Jews remain as 2% of the USA population.  

So, South America seemed like a good place to go, but they found that most of the countries there required a person to show their baptismal certificate to make sure that they were Christians.  They were not anxious to take in Jews.  Many of the South American countries had already been populated by Germans, and many of those followed the Nazi persuasion.  Naturally, after the war, the Nazis became the refugees and they populated the South American countries easily.
                                                               

Jacobsthal family with aunt and uncle in Amsterdam
 ready to immigrate to Chile February 1938

"These attitudes were reflected in increasingly tight immigration laws introduced throughout Latin America in the late 1930s (Mexico in 1937; Argentina in 1938; Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay, and Uruguay in 1939). The results of these laws were striking. Argentina, which had admitted 79,000 Jewish immigrants between 1918 and 1933, officially admitted 24,000 between 1933 and 1943. Another 20,000 Jews entered Argentina illegally, crossing the border from neighboring countries. Brazil admitted 96,000 Jewish immigrants between 1918 and 1933, but only 12,000 between 1933 and 1941."

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, many Jews within Germany decided that it was time to leave. Though many German Jews had emigrated in the preceding years, the Jews who remained had a more difficult time leaving the country because emigration policies had been toughened. By 1939, not only were visas needed to be able to enter another country but money was also needed to leave Germany. Since many countries, especially the United States, had immigration quotas, visas were near impossible to acquire within the short time spans in which they were needed. For many, the visas were acquired after it was too late.
                           

Saturday, May 13, 1939 these Jews had sailed.
Hopeful to land in Cuba,  from Germany on St. Louis escaping
Nazi persecution

                                                 

St. Louis in Havana, Cuba's port

In this climate, Cuban authorities denied entry to most passengers on the ship the St. Louis, when it docked in Havana in May 1939. "With a diminishing supply of food and pressures from Hapag to return to Germany, Captain Schroeder ordered the ship to change heading to return to Europe."  They sailed to their deaths.  Before they had left Cuba, about 2 people had jumped into the ocean committing suicide, knowing what would happen to them.  In November 1941, the German government virtually cut off the flow of Jewish refugees into Latin America when it banned all Jewish emigration from territories under its control.
                                                                   

Coro, Venezuela 

                                                        Venezuela
"The History of the Jews in Venezuela dates to the middle of the 17th century, when records suggest that groups of marranos (Spanish and Portuguese descendants of baptized Jews suspected of secret adherence to Judaism) lived in Tucacas, Caracas and Maracaibo."  Marranos would have originally been Sephardim Jews.  

Jews came to a country that "is predominantly Roman Catholic and speak Spanish. The majority of Venezuelans are the result of a mixture of Europeans, Africans and Amerindians. 51.6% of the population are Mestizos of mixed European, African and Amerindian ancestry and 43.6% of Venezuelans consider themselves White of European ancestry and/or Middle Eastern. Another 3.6% is Black African, while 2% is of full Amerindian ancestry and around 1.2% other races "

Venezuela was one South American country that received Jews back in 1850.  They were West Indian Sephardim.  Like with all places with a Christian population, there were anti-Semitic outbreaks of resentment in this country which is situated on the northern part of the continent on the Caribbean Sea.  Such anti-Semitic outbreaks occurred in Coro in 1855 and again in 1902.  "Coro is the capital of Falcón State and the oldest city in the west of Venezuela. It was founded on July 26, 1527 by Juan de Ampíes as Santa Ana de Coro.  As Neu-Augsburg, it was the first German colony in the Americas under the Welsers.  The temperature in Coro for the whole year continues to range in the high 90s and low 100s.  "The Jewish Cemetery of Coro is the oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use in the Americas.  Its origin can be located in the 19th century, when Sephardic Jews from the Dutch colony of Curaçao began to migrate to the Venezuelan city of Santa Ana de Coro in 1824."

In the 20th century, eastern Europeans and German Jews (Ashkenazim Jews)  entered the country until barred after World War II  " In 1907, the Israelite Beneficial Society, which became the Israelite Association of Venezuela in 1919, was created as an organization to bring the Jews who were scattered throughout the country together.  Jewish prayer and holiday services took place in small houses in Caracas and towns like Los Teques and La Guaira. By 1917, the number of Jewish citizens rose to 475, and to 882 in 1926." 

.Jews could enter after World War I from 1918 to 1933.   However,  from 1933 to 1945, only 84,000 Jewish refugees were able to come into South America and this was less than half of the number that had come in 15 years before 1933.  Some even managed to enter through illegal channels.
                                                                         

Tiferet Israel Synagogue, Caracas, attacked in 2009

The reason they found such difficulties in entering was of anti-Semitism.  Then, the population feared the economic competition of too many people looking for jobs.  Those that were allowed to come in had to find work in agriculture, but after a while most found there way to cities where they could use some of the business skills.  The populations were made up of a lot of Germans, and they went along with the Nazi's lack of morality.
                                                                       

However, many Jews remained and in Venezuela, they played a leading role in developing the country's trade and in modernizing the capital, Caracas.

By 1990, the Jewish population was about  20,000, and most lived in the capital then.  some 90% of the Jewish youth attended Jewish schools.  "Currently, some 9,000 Jews live in Venezuela, down from about 25,000 in the 1990s. " 

Recently, anti Semitic graffito appeared near a Caracas Metro station: "Be patriotic, kill a Jew." Elsewhere in the city, another reads: "Jewish pigs, another 6 million." this is going on in Venezuela most likely because " Venezuelan President,  Nicolás Maduro,  organized a rally labeled the "March Against Israeli Genocide." There, the Venezuelan president called upon "the Jews that live in our lands" to "stop the massacre, and the murder of those innocent boys and girls."  

He was referring to the Palestinians, which shows he doesn't understand that it's been the Palestinians from Gaza who have been shelling Israel with rockets, mortars and missiles.  These past few weeks the Palestinians in Jerusalem have been stabbing Jews and ramming crowds with their cars.  Just yesterday they stabbed an Uruguayan Jewish  tourist and police.  The Jews in Venezuela are powerless to stop any killings going on in Israel, and this President should knew that.  What he's doing is just instigating more attacks on Jews, both in Israel and in Venezuela.  

Resource: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007824
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Venezuela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Venezuela
http://jewishcurrents.org/americas-first-illegal-immigrants-39913
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uruguayan-jew-stabbed-to-death-in-suspected-anti-semitic-attack/