Of course, and so did FDR.
The Left today condemns their own hero, FDR, for not allowing more Jews to enter the country illegally.
Breitman argues that FDR did, in fact, do all he could have done legally.
The Left is arguing that FDR coulda/shoulda acted just like Obama today -- with his phone and his pen, let the laws be damned.
So, here's the real irony & problem: the very people who most strongly supported FDR's war preparations before Pearl Harbor (Southern conservative Democrats) most strongly opposed increasing quotas of Europe's refugees.
So, as so often happened, FDR faced the choice of winning one small battle over refugees at the cost of losing the larger war.
The difference is clear: wartime powers. Even though war had not been declared, the US was already ramping up. I think he had plenty of legal precedents to grant asylum, not immigration. Difference.
So “so did FDR”, yet he utterly refused to act in this instance, which did not require executive fiat, but instead the US Coast Guard actively chased off the boat. None of the passengers on the St. Louis were trying to sneak into the USA as illegals, and their demeanor ought to have made it utterly obvious as to what they believed they would face if forced to return to the embrace of the Drittes Reich—many committing suicide rather than face it.
Like Wilson, FDR got re-elected on an anti-war platform; and like Wilson, FDR got hit over the head with war for his efforts. Obama is quintupling-down at least on what these predecessors did with respect to trying to evade war, but with the addition of actually providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
BTW, in the face of continued alterations of handle as an Alinskyite attempt at ridicule: just how old are you? Never mind the ping feature leaving no doubt as to whom one is addressing.