The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a
United States federal law
The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as ...
that prevented
immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the
Eastern Hemisphere. Additionally, the formation of the
U.S. Border Patrol was authorized by the act.
The 1924 act supplanted earlier acts to effectively ban all emigration from
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
and set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...
, an 80% reduction from the average before
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. As a temporary measure, taking effect in
fiscal year
A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...
1925, quota limits per country were reduced from those established by 1921's
Emergency Quota Act
__NOTOC__
The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act (ch. 8, of May 19, 1921), was formulated mainly in response to the larg ...
(3% of a country's foreign-born population present in the U.S. in the
1910 census), to 2% of the foreign-born population recorded in the
1890 census.
[ A new quota took effect in 1927, based on each nationality's share of the total U.S. population in the 1920 census, a system which would govern American immigration policy from 1929 until 1965.] According to the U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other ...
's Office of the Historian
The Office of the Historian is an office of the United States Department of State within the Foreign Service Institute. It is legally responsible for the preparation and publication of the official historical documentary record of U.S. foreign p ...
, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."[ Congressional opposition was minimal.
The act's provisions were revised in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
]
Context
The Naturalization Act of 1790
The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free Whit ...
declared that only people of European descent were eligible for naturalization, but eligibility was extended to people of African descent in the Naturalization Act of 1870
The Naturalization Act of 1870 () was a United States federal law that created a system of controls for the naturalization process and penalties for fraudulent practices. It is also noted for extending the naturalization process to "aliens of A ...
. Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
laborers and Japanese people
The are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Japanese archipelago."人類学上は,旧石器時代あるいは縄文時代以来,現在の北海道〜沖縄諸島(南西諸島)に住んだ集団を祖先にもつ人々。" () Jap ...
were barred from immigrating
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
to the U.S. in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplo ...
and the (unenforced) Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907
The was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States and the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigrants already ...
, respectively.[
A limitation on Southern and ]Eastern European
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
immigration was first proposed in 1896 in the form of the literacy test bill. Henry Cabot Lodge was confident the bill would provide an indirect measure of reducing emigration from these countries, but after passing both Congress and the Senate, it was vetoed by President Cleveland. Another proposal for immigration restriction was introduced again in 1909 by U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge (May 12, 1850 November 9, 1924) was an American Republican politician, historian, and statesman from Massachusetts. He served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. ...
. The Immigration Act of 1917
The Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Literacy Act and less often as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissib ...
restricted immigration further in a variety of ways. It increased restrictions on Asian immigration, raised the general immigrant head tax, excluded those deemed to be diseased or mentally unwell, and in light of intense lobbying by the Immigration Restriction League
The Immigration Restriction League was an American nativist and anti-immigration organization founded by Charles Warren, Robert DeCourcy Ward, and Prescott F. Hall in 1894. According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class found ...
, introduced the literacy test for all new immigrants to prove their ability to read English. In the wake of the post-World War I recession, many Americans believed that bringing in more immigrants would worsen the unemployment rate
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refere ...
. The Red Scare of 1919–1921 had fueled fears of foreign radicals migrating to undermine American values and provoke an uprising like the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
in Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
. The number of immigrants entering the United States decreased for about a year from July 1919 to June 1920 but doubled in the year after that.
U.S. Representative Albert Johnson, a eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
advocate, and Senator David Reed were the two main architects of the act. In the wake of intense lobbying
In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which ...
, it passed with strong congressional support. There were nine dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
, the most vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
Representative, Emanuel Celler
Emanuel Celler (May 6, 1888 – January 15, 1981) was an American politician from New York who served in the United States House of Representatives for almost 50 years, from March 1923 to January 1973. He served as the dean of the United States H ...
, a Jewish American. Decades later, he pointed out the act's "startling discrimination against central, eastern and southern Europe."[ ]
Proponents of the act sought to establish a distinct American identity by preserving its ethnic homogeneity. Reed told the Senate that earlier legislation "disregards entirely those of us who are interested in keeping American stock up to the highest standard—that is, the people who were born here." He believed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, most of whom were Catholics or Jews, arrived sick and starving, were less capable of contributing to the American economy
The United States is a highly developed mixed-market economy and has the world's largest nominal GDP and net wealth. It has the second-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) behind China. It has the world's seventh-highest per capita GDP ...
, and were unable to adapt to American culture
The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western, and European origin, yet its influences includes the cultures of Asian American, African American, Latin American, and Native American peoples and their cultures. The U ...
. Eugenics was used as justification for the act's restriction of certain races or ethnicities of people to prevent the spread of perceived feeblemindedness in American society. Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers (; January 27, 1850December 13, 1924) was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's ...
, himself a Jewish immigrant from Britain and the founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), supported the act because he opposed the cheap labor that immigration represented even though the act would sharply reduce Jewish immigration. Both the AFL and the Ku Klux Klan supported the act.[Steven G. Koven, Frank Götzke, ]
American Immigration Policy: Confronting the Nation's Challenges
' (Springer, 2010), p. 133
Lobbyists from the West Coast, where a majority of Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian immigrants had settled, were especially concerned with excluding Asian immigrants. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act had already slowed Chinese immigration, but as Japanese andto a lesser degreeKorean and Filipino laborers began arriving and putting down roots in Western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...
, an exclusionary movement formed in reaction to the "Yellow Peril
The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racial color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a psychocultural menace from the Eastern world ...
." Valentine S. McClatchy, the founder of The McClatchy Company
The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states an ...
and a leader of the anti-Japanese movement, argued, "They come here specifically and professedly for the purpose of colonizing and establishing here permanently the proud Yamato race." He cites their supposed inability to assimilate to American culture and the economic threat that they posed to white businessmen and farmers.[
Opposing the act, U.S. Secretary of State ]Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, politician and jurist who served as the 11th Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the ...
said, "The legislation would seem to be quite unnecessary, even for the purpose for which it is devised." The act faced strong opposition from the Japanese government with which the U.S. government had maintained a cordial economic and political relationship.[ In Japan, the bill was called by some the "Japanese Exclusion" act.] Japanese Foreign Minister Matsui Keishirō
was a Japanese statesman and diplomat.
Biography
Matsui was a native of Osaka Prefecture, and a graduate of the Law School of Tokyo Imperial University in 1889. He entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the same year. In 1890, he was assigned ...
instructed the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Masanao Hanihara
was a Japanese diplomat.
Biography
He was born on August 25, 1876.
He came to the United States in 1902 as a member of the Japanese Embassy at Washington, D.C., was consul general at San Francisco in 1916–18, then returned to Japan as direc ...
, to write to Hughes:
Members of the Senate interpreted Hanihara's phrase "grave consequences" as a threat, which was used by hardliners of the bill to fuel both houses of Congress to vote for it. Because 1924 was an election year and he was unable to form a compromise, President Calvin Coolidge declined to use his veto
A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president or monarch vetoes a bill to stop it from becoming law. In many countries, veto powers are established in the country's constitution. Veto ...
power to block the act, although both houses passed it by a veto-overriding two-thirds majority. The act was signed into law on May 24, 1924.
Provisions
The immigration act made permanent the basic limitations on immigration to the United States
Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country in the worl ...
established in 1921 and modified the National Origins Formula
National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included l ...
, which had been established in that year. In conjunction with the Immigration Act of 1917
The Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Literacy Act and less often as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissib ...
, it governed American immigration policy until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed, which revised it completely.
The act provided that no alien ineligible to become a citizen could be admitted to the United States as an immigrant. That was aimed primarily at Japanese aliens[ although they were not explicitly named in the act. It imposed fines on transportation companies who landed aliens in violation of ]U.S. immigration law
Many acts of congress and executive actions relating to immigration to the United States and citizenship of the United States have been enacted in the United States. Most immigration and nationality laws are codified in Title 8 of the United St ...
. It defined the term "immigrant" and designated all other alien entries into the United States as "non-immigrant," or temporary visitors. It also established classes of admission for such non-immigrants.
The act set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...
, an 80% reduction from average before World War I, and barred immigrants from Asia, including Japan. However, the Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
was then a U.S. colony and so its citizens were U.S. nationals
United States nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds United States nationality. In the United States, nationality is typically obtained through provisions in the U.S. Constitution, various laws, and international agree ...
and could thus travel freely to the United States. The act did not include China since it was already barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplo ...
.
The 1924 act reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their 1910 population (as defined by the Emergency Quota Act
__NOTOC__
The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act (ch. 8, of May 19, 1921), was formulated mainly in response to the larg ...
of 1921) to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of any nationality residing in the United States according to the 1890 census.[ A more recent census existed, but at the behest of a eugenics subcommittee chaired by eugenicist ]Madison Grant
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...
, Congress used the 1890 one to increase immigrants from Northern and Western Europe and to decrease those from Eastern and Southern Europe. According to ''Commonweal'', the act "relied on false nostalgia for a census that only seemed to depict a homogenous, Northern European–descended nation: in reality, 15 percent of the nation were immigrants in 1890."
The 1890-based quotas were set to last until 1927, when they would be replaced by of a total annual quota of 150,000, proportional to the national origins figures from the 1920 census.[Immigration Act of 1924 (43 Stat.153)](_blank)
However, this did little to diversify the nations from which immigrants came from because the 1920 census did not include Blacks, Mulattos, and Asians as part of the American population used for the quotas. The lowest quota per country was 100 individuals, but even then only those eligible for citizenship could immigrate to the U.S. (i.e. only whites in China could immigrate). Establishing national origin quotas for the country proved to be a difficult task, and was not accepted and completed until 1929. The act gave 85% of the immigration quota to Northern and Western Europe and those who had an education or had a trade. The other 15% went disproportionately to Eastern and Southern Europe.
The act established preferences under the quota system for certain relatives of U.S. residents, including their unmarried children under 21, their parents, and spouses at least 21 and over. It also preferred immigrants at least 21 who were skilled in agriculture and their wives and dependent children under 16. Non-quota status was accorded to wives and unmarried children under 18 of U.S. citizens; natives of Western Hemisphere countries, with their families; non-immigrants; and certain others.
Subsequent amendments eliminated certain elements of the law's inherent discrimination against women.
Quota calculation formula
In 1927, the 1924 act was modified to use census data from 1920. The Bureau of the Census
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...
and Department of Commerce estimated the ''National Origins of the White Population of the United States in 1920'' in numbers, then calculated the percentage share each nationality made up. The National Origins Formula derived quotas by calculating the equivalent proportion of each nationality out of a total pool of 150,000 annual quota immigrants, with a minimum quota of 100. This formula was used until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 adopted a simplified formula limiting each country to a flat quota of one-sixth of one percent of that nationality's 1920 population count, with a minimum quota of 100.
Quotas by country under successive laws
Listed below are historical quotas on emigration from the Eastern Hemisphere, by country, as applied in given fiscal years ending June 30, calculated according to successive immigration laws and revisions from the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 to the final quota year of 1965. The 1922 and 1925 systems based on dated census records of the foreign-born population were intended as temporary measures; the 1924 Act's National Origins Formula based on the 1920 census of the total U.S. population took effect on July 1, 1929.
Visas and border control
The act also established the "consular control system" of immigration, which divided responsibility for immigration between the U.S. State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The act also mandated no alien to be allowed to enter the United States without a valid immigration visa
Visa most commonly refers to:
*Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company
** Visa Debit card issued by the above company
** Visa Electron, a debit card
** Visa Plus, an interbank network
*Travel visa, a document that allows ...
issued by an American consular officer abroad.
Consular officers were now allowed to issue visas to eligible applicants, but the number of visas to be issued by each consulate annually was limited, and no more than 10% of the quota could be given out in any one month. Aliens were not able to leave their home countries before having a valid visa, as opposed to the old system of deporting them at ports of debarkation. That gave a double layer of protection to the border since if they were found to be inadmissible, immigrants could still be deported on arrival.
Establishment of Border Patrol
The National Origins Act authorized the formation of the United States Border Patrol, which was established two days after the act was passed, primarily to guard the Mexico–United States border
The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border trave ...
.[Airriess, Christopher A.; ''Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America'', p]
40
A $10 tax was imposed on Mexican immigrants, who were allowed to continue immigrating based on their perceived willingness to provide cheap labor.
Results
The act was seen in a negative light in Japan, causing resignations of ambassadors and protests. A citizen committed '' seppuku'' near the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo
The Embassy of the United States in Tokyo (駐日アメリカ合衆国大使館 ''Chū Ni~Tsu Amerikagasshūkoku taishikan'') represents the United States in Tokyo, Japan. Along with consulates in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Naha, the ...
with a note that read: "Appealing to the American people." American businesses situated in Japan suffered the economic brunt of the legislation's repercussions, as the Japanese government subsequently increased tariffs on American trading by '100 per cent'.
Passage of the Immigration Act has been credited with ending a growing democratic movement in Japan during this time period, and opening the door to Japanese militarist government control. According to David C. Atkinson, on the Japaneses government's perception of the act, "this indignity is seen as a turning point in the growing estrangement of the U.S. and Japan, which culminated in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...
."
The act's revised formula reduced total emigration from 357,803 between 1923 and 1924 to 164,667 between 1924 and 1925. The law's impact varied widely by country. Emigration from Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...
and Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
fell 19%, while emigration from Italy fell more than 90%. From 1901 to 1914, 2.9 million Italians immigrated, an average of 210,000 per year. Under the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed since the 1890 quota counted only 182,580 Italians in the U.S.
Historical Statistics of the United States: 1789–1945
', Series B 304–330 (p. 32). US Bureau of the Census, 1949. By contrast, the annual quota for Germany after the passage of the act was over 55,000 since German-born residents in 1890 numbered 2,784,894.[ Germany, Britain, and Ireland had the highest representation in 1890.][ The provisions of the act were so restrictive that in 1924 more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Chinese, and Japanese left the United States than arrived as immigrants.][
The law sharply curtailed emigration from those countries that were previously host to the vast majority of the Jews in the United States, almost 75% of whom emigrated from Russia alone.][Stuart J. Wright, ''An Emotional Gauntlet: From Life in Peacetime America to the War in European Skies'' (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p. 163] Because Eastern European immigration did not become substantial until the late 19th century, the law's use of the population of the United States in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora ( he, תְּפוּצָה, təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: ; Yiddish: ) is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of th ...
lived at the time, impossible. In 1929, the quotas were adjusted to one-sixth of 1% of the 1920 census figures, and the overall immigration limit reduced to 150,000.[ The law was not modified to aid the flight of ]Jewish refugees
This article lists expulsions, refugee crises and other forms of displacement that have affected Jews.
Timeline
The following is a list of Jewish expulsions and events that prompted significant streams of Jewish refugees.
Assyrian captivity
; ...
in the 1930s or 1940s despite the rise of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. The quotas were adjusted to allow more Jewish refugees after World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, but without increasing immigration overall.
During World War II, the U.S. modified the act to set immigration quotas for their allies in China. The immigration quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Legacy
The act has been characterized as the culmination of decades of intentional exclusion of Asian immigrants.
Looking back on the significance of the act, Harry Laughlin
Harry Hamilton Laughlin (March 11, 1880 – January 26, 1943) was an American educator and eugenicist. He served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closure in 1939, and was among the most a ...
, the eugenicist who served as expert advisor to the House Committee on Immigration during the legislative process, praised it as a political breakthrough in the adoption of scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
as a theoretical foundation for immigration policy. Due to the reliance upon eugenics in forming the policy, and growing public reception towards scientific racism as justification for restriction and racial stereotypes
An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nation ...
by 1924, the act has been seen as a piece of legislation that formalized the views of contemporary U.S. society. Historian Mae Ngai writes of the national origins quota system:
At one level, the new immigration law differentiated Europeans according to nationality and ranked them in a hierarchy of desirability. At another level, the law constructed a white American
White Americans are Americans who identify as and are perceived to be white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. As of the 2020 Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone. This represented ...
race, in which persons of European descent shared a common whiteness distinct from those deemed to be not white.
See also
* Anarchist Exclusion Act
* Anti-Italianism
* Antisemitism in the United States
Antisemitism in the United States has existed for centuries. In the United States, most Jewish community relations agencies draw distinctions between antisemitism, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status ...
* History of antisemitism in the United States
There have been different opinions among historians with regard to the extent of antisemitism in America's past and how American antisemitism contrasted with its European counterpart. Earlier students of American Jewish life minimized the pres ...
* Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplo ...
* Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907
The was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States and the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigrants already ...
* History of immigration to the United States
The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States, from the colonial era to the present. The United States experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe, and later from Asi ...
* Immigration Act of 1917
The Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Literacy Act and less often as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissib ...
* Indian Citizenship Act
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, (, enacted June 2, 1924) was an Act of the United States Congress that granted US citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitutio ...
* List of United States Immigration Acts
Many acts of congress and executive actions relating to immigration to the United States and citizenship of the United States have been enacted in the United States. Most immigration and nationality laws are codified in Title 8 of the United St ...
* Mexican Repatriation
The Mexican Repatriation ( es, link=no, Repatriación mexicana) was the repatriation and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939. Estimates of how many we ...
* Nordicism
Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book ''The Passing of the Great Race ...
* Palmer Raids
* Racial Equality Proposal
The was an amendment to the Treaty of Versailles that was considered at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Proposed by Japan, it was never intended to have any universal implications, but one was attached to it anyway, which caused its controversy. ...
* Racism in the United States
Racism in the United States comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are related to each other, are held by various people and groups in the United States, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and ...
* Statue of Liberty National Monument
* White Australia policy
The White Australia policy is a term encapsulating a set of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia, starting i ...
References
Footnotes
Citations
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Statistics of who was allowed in after the Immigration Act of 1924
"'Shut the Door': A Senator Speaks for Immigration Restriction"
– transcript of speech given before Congress by Sen. Ellison D. Smith, April 9, 1924
Eugenics Laws Restricting Immigration
*
{{Authority control
1924 in international relations
1924 in American law
68th United States Congress
Anti-Asian sentiment in the United States
Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States
Anti-Filipino sentiment
Anti-immigration politics in the United States
Anti-Italian sentiment
Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States
Anti-Korean sentiment
Anti-Slavic sentiment
Asian-American issues
Eastern Europeans in the United States
Eugenics in the United States
Italian-American history
Presidency of Calvin Coolidge
United States federal immigration and nationality legislation
Repealed United States legislation
1924 in Judaism
May 1924 events