point of saturation as regards admission of refugees", a sentiment repeated by most other representatives. The only countries willing to accept a large number of Jews were the Dominican Republic, which offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms, and later Costa Rica. In 1940 an agreement was signed and Rafael Trujillo donated of his properties near the town of Sosúa for settlements. The first settlers arrived in May 1940: only about 800 settlers came to Sosúa, and most later moved on to the United States. Disagreements among the numerous Jewish organisations on how to handle the refugee crisis added to the confusion. Concerned that Jewish organisations would be seen trying to promote greater immigration into the United States, executive secretary to the American Jewish Committee, Morris Waldman, privately warned against Jewish representatives highlighting the problems Jewish refugees faced. Samuel Rosenman sent President Franklin D. Roosevelt a memorandum stating that an "increase of quotas is wholly inadvisable as it would merely produce a 'Jewish problem' in the countries increasing the quota." According to the JTA, during the discussions, five leading Jewish organisations sent a joint memorandum discouraging mass Jewish emigration from central Europe. Reacting to the conferences' failure, the AJC declined to directly criticise American policy, while Jonah Wise blamed the British government and praised "American generosity". Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion of the Jewish Agency were both firmly opposed to Jews being allowed entry into Western countries, hoping that the pressure of hundreds of thousands of refugees having nowhere to go would force Britain to open Palestine to Jewish immigration. In a similar vein, Abba Hillel Silver of the United Jewish Appeal refused to assist the resettlement of Jews in the United States saying he saw "no particular good" in what the conference was trying to achieve. The guiding principle of Zionist leaders was to press only for immigration to Palestine. Yoav Gelber concluded that “if the conference were to lead to a mass emigration to places other than Palestine, the Zionist leaders were not particularly interested in its work.” Years later, while noting that American and British Jewish leaders were "very helpful to our work behind the scenes, [but] were not notably enthusiastic about it in public", Edward Turnour who led the British delegation recalled the "stubbornly unrealistic approach" of some leading Zionists who insisted on Palestine as the only option for the refugees.