Italian-Americans and Greek-Americans were permitted to pre-empt refugee quotas to admit their relatives.

Ms. Burrows said asylum seekers should be released and Australia's annual refugee quota, now about 12,000, increased.

But the bill might end up filling the refugee quota with those fleeing religious persecution, thus shutting out other applicants.

We need more refugee numbers this year to accommodate this flow than can possibly be gained from reallocation from the Indochinese or any other refugee quota.

Sometime around Oct. 1, the annual refugee quota - a presidential directive, as it is called - is issued by the White House.

On Nov. 9 Mr. Reagan set the Soviet refugee quota at 18,000.

Existing refugee quotas were completely inadequate, and by the fall of 1946, it was not clear whether the remaining DPs would ever find a home.

Moscow is allowing so many people to leave that it now seems the United States cannot accommodate them all within its refugee quota.

This would double the refugee quota from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.