THE CORSI AFFAIR

This case has become a sore spot in the relations between the United States and Italy. Unintentionally, John Foster Dulles[1] acted in a way that Italians consider offensive. In truth, it is just a blunder, a foolish act, but in politics appearances count more than reality. Edward Corsi is one of today’s most respected Italian Americans. He was born in Italy to a well-to-do family, the son of a far-left party congressman from Abruzzi. He was still a child when his father died and his widowed mother married a man of modest means. Due to financial difficulties, the family left Italy for the United States and settled in the same district where Fiorello La Guardia and Vito Marcantonio[2] also lived. Here, little Edward had to start from the bottom, both in terms of education and social status. Corsi is a simple and quiet man, with common sense and good judgment. He is very honest, highly educated, with an artistic talent as a painter. He is also a realist when it comes to confronting political problems; but, despite this, he never cynically accepted the status quo and corruption of our times; and always stayed true to a deep compassion for the human condition. Thanks to this combination of sensibilities, he never took on airs of importance and arrogance, something that many Italian Americans typically do as soon as they achieve success in business or in politics. I have often said that Corsi is one of the best products of American influence on the Italian character: when an Italian immigrant manages to avoid becoming a criminal; ending up in an insane asylum; or swelling up into a prominent, that means he really is a good man. There are many of them, but unfortunately Italy doesn’t know they exist: Italian authorities who visit the United States—the likes of Mario Scelba, Gaetano Martino,[3] Pietro Parini[4] or, as happened most recently, Amintore Fanfani;[5] never get the chance to meet any of them (they always end up meeting with Fortune Pope instead.)

Social solidarity is not particularly strong among Italians or Italian Americans, as demonstrated, for instance, by the fact that they contribute very little to public charities. It is thus rather impressive to see how Corsi became involved in public life; working with the activists who were helping new immigrants who had recently settled in the tuberculosis-infested, dirt-poor and very dangerous East Harlem neighborhood; in the same hovels where Italians used to live before blacks and Puerto Ricans moved in.[6]

The first time we met he was still a modest social worker who toiled around the clock for a meager salary in a social welfare center located in a predominantly Italian neighborhood. The former Harlem House, now called La Guardia House,[7] is an institution devoted to assisting new immigrants in need of basic guidance and support. It is not a charity like a soup kitchen for the unemployed; rather it is a community center where newly arrived immigrants, especially those who do not speak English, can find intelligent and generous advice and aid, free of charge. Today it organizes sports activities for youngsters, tours for the elderly and support groups for young mothers. The center also offers art courses, lectures and other events that keep children off the streets where they could get involved in racial confrontations and fights. The old economic problems of yore have been replaced by new social conflicts and crises. At the time when I first met him, Corsi had to fulfill the roles of lawyer, adviser, peacemaker and judge. He knew everybody by name and attended every baptism and wedding. These are not easy tasks, and the only compensation he received was respect and some influence. Corsi was well known but he was too honest and too non-political to take advantage of his popularity. He never enjoyed great name recognition beyond his circle. He also had too much integrity to compete with demagogues and wheeler-dealers who only knew how to promote themselves. When he entered political contests, he didn’t get as many votes as other colorful characters who had much less substance but were much more brazen with promises. Moreover, he was a member of the Republican Party, a party that in New York never had a majority. He started his political journey with La Guardia, and then became a trusted adviser to Dewey for labor relations in the state of New York. In the last elections the Republicans lost the governorship of the state and Corsi left his position as labor commissary.

His golden period, in the moral, not financial sense, was the time when President Herbert Hoover[8] appointed him commissary of Ellis Island. The institution closed down in 1954, but in its heydays that name meant sheer terror for millions of people. It was the entry gate for immigrants and those who were refused entrance would end up spending weeks or months in those sad rooms, like in a prison. It really struck a chord when the son of immigrants was chosen to run the place. Corsi acquitted himself with humanity and firmness in this job and wrote a book about his experience: In the Shadow of Liberty.[9] The book is full of episodes, portraits, anecdotes and observations packed with color and humanity. It’s too bad a book like this was never translated into Italian, instead of all the junk from America that is treated as if it were the apotheosis of the human spirit.

After he left his position as labor commissary for the state of New York, the Republican Party, to express its appreciation for his work, sent him to Washington as assistant for immigration affairs in Dulles’s department. Here he was put in charge of a delicate and complex issue. In 1953 President Eisenhower had signed into law[10] a bill sponsored by House Representative Francis Walter[11] and Senator Patrick McCarran[12] giving special immigration rights to a group of about 240,000 displaced Europeans who, after World War II, had been persecuted for political reasons and were practically without a country.[13] About sixty thousand of them were Italians, mostly from the north eastern regions that had been lost to the Yugoslavian forces.[14] This humanitarian initiative was meant to show to the world the generosity of the United States. Instead, it turned out to be a bureaucratic farce and an exercise in hypocrisy. From the very beginning I predicted that it would be impossible to reach the preordained quota by the stated deadline of 1956. The number of applicants processed by the United States immigration authorities in those countries turned out to be so low that it caused the indignation of European politicians who were concerned with the presence of large groups of displaced persons, housed in temporary camps, in their countries. Appointed and welcomed by Dulles as a personal friend, Corsi was sent to Italy and Germany to try to figure out first-hand why there had been such long delays in processing the applications. When he returned to Washington and outlined a number of proposals to solve the logjam, he ran into opposition inside the state department and Congress. One of the co-sponsors of the law, Walter, denounced him for having been a member of associations that the attorney general[15] had labeled as subversive. Corsi denied any involvement. On one occasion Walter was forced to recognize that his accusation against Corsi was wrong. In another case, Corsi stated he never allowed his signature to be used.[16] It is notorious that pro-communist groups in those days often arbitrarily used the names of people who were considered sympathizers. Corsi was a life-long Republican but belonged to the liberal wing of the party and had good relations with the labor unions. Most likely he had frequent contacts with people who were secretly communist. The state department understood this was a pretext and, at first, it looked as if it did not consider Corsi to be a traveling salesman of subversion. The investigation was not yet complete when suddenly rumors started circulating that Corsi’s position was not a permanent one but, rather, a ninety-day temporary assignment. After three months in this post, Corsi was offered a different position, a rather vague one, in charge of recruiting immigrants for South American countries. It was a nasty trick. Maybe another man would have accepted the gold-coated poison pill, but Corsi resented this treatment. He spoke with Dulles and the truth came out: the state department didn’t want any trouble with Congress and decided to throw Corsi overboard. Later, when asked, Dulles denied it was true, although Corsi still confirms everything and calls him a liar to this day. In truth, Corsi is simply guilty of having tried to make a hypocritical law work, a law nobody wants to implement and that was scheduled to expire in 1956 anyway.

Dulles’s trick was so transparently obvious that the press unanimously sided with Corsi. Even some Democrats jumped on it with the goal of embarrassing Dulles. Republican organizations of New York state even requested that the president fix Dulles’s error and honor the commitment the president himself had made to the law that was supposed to show the world how generous the United States is toward the unfortunates without a country…

New York, April 22, 1955