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Recent studies of immigration have questioned assumptions about the effectiveness of government controls. In her work on illegal Jewish immigration to the United States, Libby Garland argues that official immigration quotas may not reflect actual numbers of immigrants and critiques historians for being too ready to take immigration laws at face value. Mae Ngai's work on the racialisation of "illegal aliens" in the United States also documents the failure of legislation to curb illegal immigration. Situating her study within this historiography, Sheila Fitzpatrick has re‐examined Australian measures that aimed to limit the entry of Holocaust survivors and concluded that the number of arrivals was substantially higher than previously recognised, in part because migrants and their sponsors found ways around restrictions. In substantiation, Fitzpatrick drew on the archives of the International Refugee Organization and the Australian Government, and the papers of the country's first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell. This article revisits Fitzpatrick's sources, as well as the records of Jewish organisations she did not consult. It establishes that the Australian government effectively limited Jewish immigration and the estimates of earlier scholars were substantially correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jewish immigration to Australia in the aftermath of the Holocaust has been much studied. This article adds to knowledge of the period by examining one aspect which to the present has not received sufficient consideration, that pertaining to the funding of Jewish survivor immigration from Europe. After the war, the cost of travel to Australia was substantial, the equivalent of male average weekly earnings over 20 or more weeks. Australian Jewish organisations lacked the capacity to assist at the level required by thousands of Jewish survivors who wished to migrate to Australia and they turned to American Jewish welfare organisations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, but even their resources were stretched. The International Refugee Organisation stepped into the breach and provided subsidies for travel of Jewish refugees in the first year of its operation, but in August 1948 it was required to cease this funding assistance by Australia's minister for immigration, Arthur Calwell. This article examines the reasons for Calwell's action, and the failed attempts to secure its reversal during Calwell's ministry and that of his successor, Harold Holt. It reveals political judgements and prejudices that overrode humanitarian concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]