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HOLOCAUST PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN RECENT IMMIGRATION CASES
More than fifty years after the end of World War II, the Nazi Holocaust still looms large in US immigration policy. Two recent cases illustrate the point. Last month, a retired Philadelphia baker was ordered deported for participating in Nazi atrocities. Nikolaus Schiffer, who had already been stripped three years ago of his citizenship, was found to be deportable by Immigration Judge John Gossert Jr. because Mr. Schiffer had served as a concentration camp guard and had played a role in taking Jews and others on a death march to Auschwitz. According to Judge Gossert, "Schiffer personally testified to his participation in a death march from Hersbruck to Auschwitz on which weakened prisoners were shot or left to die when they could not continue." Schiffer did not admit to knowing what actually took place within the camps. He has been ordered deported to Romania and is the second death camp guard in as many months to be ordered deported. Two other men have recently been stripped of their US citizenship and are facing deportation. 
A case that has also received considerable publicity involves a young Swiss bank guard named Christophe Meili. The role of Swiss banks in financing the Nazi regime, in helping the Nazis bank stolen Jewish money and in failing to return money owed to survivors of Jewish accountholders have been at the center of a whirlwind of controversy. Mr. Meili was a security guard forthe Union Bank of Switzerland who accidentally stumbled on carts of documents from the Holocaust era that were bound for the shredder. He turned the documents over to members of Switzerland's Jewish community. Mr. Meili had been charged with violating Swiss bank secrecy laws (the charges have been dropped), but Mr. Meili has continued to receive hate mail, threats to kidnap his children and even death threats. Senator Alphonse D'Amato, (R-NY) has become a champion of the fight to expose the Swiss role in the Holocaust and has also taken on the role of leading the push to get permanent residency status for Mr. Meili in the United States. Congress has the power through legislation called a Special Bill to grant someone permanent residency, though this authority is rarely exercised. In late May, the Senate agreed unanimously to grant permanent residency to Mr. Meili and his family. The House of Representatives will consider the special bill this month. 
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