Americanization and Demand for Restriction
Eric Foner, Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.
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"Some hailed the 1924 act as the most far-reaching change that occurred in U.S. immigration policy during the course of that quarter century, in that it arrested the tendency toward a change in the fundamental composition of the American stock."
~House of Representatives, Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes
The Road to Restriction
After targeting Asian immigrants, Americans turned against Southeastern Europeans. Because World War I had brought a deluge of "poor Europeans, victims of the postwar economic crisis" (King 200), anti-immigration groups rallied to remove the threat. Immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany were labeled as "old and desired" immigrants. These "true" Americans shunned immigrants of Polish, Italian, Greek, Jewish, and other descents.
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"One writer has listed six motives behind the Act of 1924. They were: (1) postwar isolationism; (2) the doctrine of the alleged superiority of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic 'races'; (3) the fear that 'pauper labor' would lower wage levels; (4) the belief that people of certain nations were less law-abiding than others; (5) the fear of foreign ideologies and subversion; (6) the fear that entrance of too many people with different customs and habits would undermine our national and social unity and order."
~President John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants
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The Desired |
The Undesired |
"[The] objective was to maintain...the ethnic composition of the American people, on the premise that some nations are far closer to the United States in culture, customs,...standards of living, respect for law, and experience in self-government. Others denounced the act as racially biased, statistically incorrect, and a clumsy instrument of selection based on discrimination against nations instead of the personal qualifications of immigrants."
~House of Representatives, Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes
The Immigration act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act)
Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, beginning the immigration quotas where all nations received an annual numerical limit on immigrants that could enter the United States. Later on, President Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which established the "national origins" quota system that limited immigrants by ethnicity instead. Northwestern Europeans acquired generous quotas while Southeastern Europeans were awarded with quotas inadequate for their needs.
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"Prior to the proclaiming of the national origin quotas, national quotas had been imposed under the Quota Act of 1921 , which established quotas for each country of 3% of the alien population in the United States attributable to each country according to the census of 1910. In the interim period between the enactment of the Immigration Act of 1924, and the proclamation of national origins quotas, the quota for each country was fixed at 2% of the alien population of the United States according to the census of 1890, attributable to each country."
~Senate, Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes
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"The two maps show, by comparison, the changes that will take place in the complexion of our immigration if the [1921] quota scheme is abandoned in favor of...[the 1924 quota scheme]. The various shadings indicate the size of the quota allowed each country, the range being from black, indicating the countries from which the flow will be heaviest; to white, where it will be held down to a minimum."
~Senator David A. Reed, New York Times
Results of Restriction
"Opponents [of the national origins quota system]...noted that much of each annual quota was wasted because of low immigration into the United States from the countries with the largest quotas."
~Congress and the Nation:1965-1968
Despite restrictions, Southeastern Europeans continued entering the United States at overwhelming rates of up to ten times their permitted amount, yet they still had massive backlogs of people anxiously waiting to immigrate. When the Great Depression removed the attraction of the American labor market, immigration to the United States dropped severely.
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"The national origins system has failed to maintain the ethnic balance of the American population as it was designed and intended since the nations favored with the high quotas have left their quotas largely unused."
~House of Representatives, Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for Other Purposes
Back to the Immigration Act of 1917
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Next to Non-Restrictive Immigation
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