Presidential campaign. Roosevelt rewarded him with the position of U.S. Ambassador to Italy, which he held from 1933 to 1936. During his ambassadorship, he was criticized for advising the president against imposing an embargo on oil shipments to Italy in retaliation for Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. He "somewhat admired European fascism", according to diplomat and historian David McKean. Long was a member of a special mission to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay in 1938. Upon the outbreak of war in September 1939, he accepted appointment as a Special Assistant Secretary of State in charge of problems arising from the war, a position he held until January 1940, when he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State. Until February 1941, he was responsible for overseeing twenty-three of the forty-two divisions in the department, before a revision of the workload among the other assistant secretaries. Long came to believe that he was under constant attack from what he termed radicals and the Jewish press for his stance on strict immigration controls mandated by the immigration laws in force at the time. In an intra-department memo he circulated in June 1940, Long wrote: "We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas." One of his most powerful tools to keep out potential refugees and immigrants was the public charge rule, which barred the admission of persons deemed likely to become a burden on the state. The standards of proof of not being a public charge were constantly shifting, and that was used to intentionally prevent refugees and immigrants from gaining admission. Ultimately, the effect of the immigration policies set by Long's department was that, during American involvement in the war, ninety percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled. If they had been, an additional 190,000 people could have escaped the atrocities being committed by the Nazis. Along with Isaiah Bowman, Long has been called a modern day Haman for his use of political position to cause harm to the Jewish People. In November 1943, when the House was considering two bills that