Barred?

Will thousands of aliens in Mexico and Canada who commute daily into the U. S. to gain their livelihood, be thrown out of work by an immigration ruling issued last week by the U. S. Department of

Labor? This question was asked particularly by citizens of Windsor, Ontario, Canadian border city, suburb of Detroit. To them the answer to the question looked like an unpleasant affirmative.

The ruling divides border aliens into two classes--native and foreign-born. Native Canadians will be permitted continued commuting privilege upon paying a $10 passport fee ard $8 head tax. Foreignborn Canadians, even though naturalized Canadian citizens, are rated according to their country of birth, not their country of naturalization. They must secure passport visas from U. S. consuls in their native countries. The ruling approved by U. S. Secretary of Labor Davis goes into effect June 1; provides six months there after for persons affected to get necessary documents.

Foreign-born Canadian commuters said that the ruling was downright exclusion. They could not get the necessary visas from their native countries if the immigration quotas from those countries were filled. They pictured themselves and their families destitute. Through officials they appealed to Premier W. L. MacKenzie King of Canada. Thus came to Vincent L. Massey, Canada's first minister to the U. S. (TIME, Nov. 22), his first truly knotty assignment in Canadian-U. S. relations. The handiest solution that he might urge would be to have foreign-born Canadian commuters classed specially as nonquota immigrants, a distinction reserved hitherto for important foreign personages.

U. S. labor unions, long agitators against the Canadian commuters, hailed the new ruling for its elimination of foreign competition for jobs in Detroit industrial plants.