Gleanings from the 1949 Run of the Saturday Evening Post

But I was more curious about what the day to day contents of the magazine looked like 70 years ago: the letters to the editor, the news updates, even the advertisements. And as the border wall and refugee policy became recurring features of the news cycle, I was digesting for the most part very different – but at times eerily familiar – takes on immigration from seven decades ago.What follows is a tour through the issues of the magazine that appeared seventy years ago this month, in February of 1949. In many of the issues I’ve read so far, there is a marked focus on immigration and refugees fleeing post-war scarcity in Europe.The January 29issue, for instance, includes a long feature entitled “They Do Anything to Get Into the U.S.A.” The piece, which bills itself as “the confessions of an American visa officer,” explains the difference between “quota” and “non-quota” visas, and the many “excludable classes,” which, the author notes, “cover everything from idiots to anarchists.”

Source: www.bunkhistory.org