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{{short description|1924 United States anti-immigration law}}
The ] '''Immigration Act of 1924''', also known as the '''National Origins Quota Act,''' '''Johnson-Reed Act,''' or the '''Immigration Quota Act of 1924''', established a system of national quotas which limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people who were already living in the ] in ], according to the census of ]. (total quota: 164,667) 86% of the quotas were allocated to northern and ] countries. It superseded the ] ]. The law was aimed at reducing the influx of ] and ]ans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the ], and prohibited immigration from ]. It set no limits on immigration from the ] which was exempt due to the dependence of the southern states on inexpensive ] labor. The United States did not want to alienate its neighbors, and it needed workers, especially those from Mexico. During World Wars I and II, the U.S. recruited thousands of temporary workers from Mexico to harvest crops in our labor-short farmland.{{fact}} Initially immigration from the other Americas was allowed, but measures were quickly adopted to deny legal entry to Mexican laborers.{{fact}}
{{redirect-distinguish|Asian Exclusion Act|Chinese Exclusion Act}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2020}}{{Infobox U.S. legislation
| shorttitle = Immigration Act of 1924
| longtitle = An Act to limit the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States, and for other purposes.
| nickname = Johnson-Reed Act
| enacted by = 68th
| effective date = May 26, 1924
| cite public law = {{USPL|68|139}}
| cite statutes at large = {{usstat|43|153}}
| leghistur1 =
| introducedin = House of Representatives
| introducedbill = {{USBill|68|H.R.|7995}}
| introducedby =
| introduceddate =
| passedbody1 = House
| passeddate1 = April 12, 1924
| passedvote1 =
| passedbody2 =
| passeddate2 =
| passedvote2 =
| conferencedate =
| passedbody3 = House
| passeddate3 = May 15, 1924
| passedvote3 =
| passedbody4 = Senate
| passeddate4 = May 15, 1924
| passedvote4 =
| signedpresident = ]
| signeddate = May 24, 1924
}}


The '''Immigration Act of 1924''', or '''Johnson–Reed Act''', including the '''Asian Exclusion Act''' and '''National Origins Act''' ({{USStatute|68|139|43|153|1924|05|26}}), was a ] that prevented ] and set quotas on the number of immigrants from ] and ] Europe.<ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /> It also authorized the creation of the country's first formal ] service, the ], and established a "consular control system" that allowed entry only to those who first obtained a ] from a ] abroad.
Some of its strongest supporters were influenced by ] and his ] book, '']''. Grant was a ] and advocate of the ] theory. His data, which is now considered by the vast majority of scientists to be flawed, purported to show the superiority of the founding ]an races.


Enacted amid increasing public and political anxiety about the country's rapid social and demographic changes, the 1924 act supplanted earlier legislation by vastly reducing immigration from countries outside the Western Hemisphere: Immigrants from Asia were banned,<ref name=gov>{{cite news|url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act|work=U.S Department of State Office of the Historian|title=The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)|access-date=February 13, 2012}}</ref> and the total annual immigration quota for the rest of the world was capped at 165,000—an 80% reduction of the yearly average before 1914. The act temporarily reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their ], per the ] of 1921, to 2% as recorded in the ];<ref name=gov/> a new quota was implemented in 1927, based on each nationality's share of the total U.S. population in the ], which would govern U.S. immigration policy until 1965.<ref name="ABA1924" /><ref name="statabstract1931" /><ref name="statabstract1966" />
==Floor debates==
On the house floor the most common argument made by those favoring the legislation, and the one reflected in the majority report, is the argument that in the interests of fairness to all ethnic groups, the quotas should reflect the relative ethnic composition of the entire country. Restrictionists noted that the census of ] was chosen because the percentages of the foreign born of different ethnic groups in that year approximated the general ethnic composition of the entire country in ]. Senator Reed of ] and Representative Rogers of ] proposed to achieve the same result by directly basing the quotas on the national origins of all people in the country as of the 1920 census, and this was eventually incorporated into the law. Representative Rogers argued that 'Gentlemen, you can not dissent from this principle because it is fair. It does not discriminate for anybody and it does not discriminate against anybody' (Cong. Rec. April 8, 1924; p. 5847). In the words of the House Majority Report:


According to the Department of State, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."<ref name="gov" /> The 1924 act would define U.S. immigration policy for nearly three decades, until being substantially revised by the ] and ultimately replaced by the ].
* “The use of the 1890 census is…an effort to preserve as nearly as possible, the racial status quo of the United States. It is hoped to guarantee as best we can at this late date, racial homogeneity in the United States. The use of a later census would discriminate against those who founded the Nation and perpetuated its institutions.”


==Context==
Senator Reed noted:
{{See also|History of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States}}


The ] declared that only people of European or white descent were eligible for naturalization, but eligibility was extended to people of African descent in the ].<ref name=Guisepi>{{cite news |last=Guisepi |first=Robert A. |work=World History International |title=Asian Americans |date=January 29, 2007 |url=http://history-world.org/asian_americans.htm |access-date=March 18, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110527055848/http://history-world.org/asian_americans.htm |archive-date=May 27, 2011 |url-status=usurped }}</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite web |date=2016-08-15 |title=Race, Nationality, and Reality |url=https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/summer/immigration-law-1 |access-date=2023-02-21 |website=National Archives |language=en}}</ref> ] laborers and ] were barred from ] to the U.S. in the 1882 ] and the (unenforced) ], respectively.<ref name=gov/>
* "The purpose, I think, of most of us in changing the quota basis is to cease from discriminating against the native born here and against the group of our citizens who come from northern and western Europe. I think the present system discriminates in favor of southeastern Europe." (Cong. Rec., April. 16, 1924; p. 6457) (i.e., because 46% of the quotas under the ] act went to Eastern and Southern Europe when they constituted less than 12% of the population).


A limitation on ] and ]an 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 houses of Congress, it was vetoed by President ].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tichenor|first=Daniel J|title=Dividing lines: the politics of immigration control in America|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2002|isbn=9781400824984|location=Princeton|pages=84}}</ref> Another proposal for immigration restriction was introduced again in 1909 by U.S. Senator ].<ref name=":8">{{cite news |url=http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/lodge_immigration.pdf |work=University of Wisconsin |title=The Restriction of Immigration |date=1909 |access-date=2012-03-02 |first1=Henry |last1=Lodge |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120306093754/http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/lodge_immigration.pdf |archive-date=2012-03-06}}</ref> The ] 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 ], introduced the literacy test for all new immigrants to prove their ability to read English.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tichenor|first=Daniel J|title=Dividing Lines: the politics of immigration control in America|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2002|isbn=9781400824984|location=Princeton|pages=138}}</ref> In the wake of the ], many Americans believed that bringing in more immigrants would worsen the ]. The ] of 1919–1921 had fueled fears of foreign radicals migrating to undermine American values and provoke an uprising like the 1917 ] in ].<ref name=Imai>{{cite web|last=Imai |first=Shiho |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration%20Act%20of%201924/ |title=Immigration Act of 1924 |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |access-date=2014-08-15}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cannato |first=Vincent J. |title=American Passage: The History of Ellis Island |location=New York |publisher=Harper |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-06-194039-2 |pages= |url=https://archive.org/details/americanpassageh00cann_0 |url-access=registration}}</ref>
* "Let me emphasize here that the restrictionists of Congress do not claim that the 'Nordic' race, or even the Anglo-Saxon race, is the best race in the world. Let us concede, in all fairness that the Czech is a more sturdy laborer, with a very low percentage of crime and insanity, that the Jew is the best businessman in the world, and that the Italian has a spiritual grasp and an artistic sense which have greatly enriched the world and which have, indeed, enriched us, a spiritual exaltation and an artistic creative sense which the Nordic rarely attains. Nordics need not be vain about their own qualifications. It well behooves them to be humble. What we do claim is that the northern European, and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But that is the full statement of the case. They came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. They added to it, they often enriched, but they did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it. We are determined that they shall not. It is a good country. It suits us. And what we assert is that we are not going to surrender it to somebody else or allow other people, no matter what their merits, to make it something different. If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves." (Cong. Rec. April 8, 1924; p. 5922).


{{Eugenics sidebar|expanded=History}}
While Representative ] stated quite bluntly that ] representatives should respect the desire of other Americans to retain the ethnic status quo:


U.S. Representative ], a ] advocate, and Senator ] were the two main architects of the act. They conceived the act as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood"; it likewise found support among xenophobic and nativist groups such as the ]. However, some proponents, such as the ] (AFL), welcomed the act for reducing cheap immigrant labor that would compete with local workers. Both public and Congressional opposition was minimal. In the wake of intense ], it passed with strong congressional support.<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1924/04/19/archives/immigration-bill-passes-the-senate-by-vote-of-62-to-6-ban-on.html |title=Immigration Bill Passes Senate by Vote of 62 to 6 |date=April 19, 1924 |access-date=February 18, 2011}}</ref> There were nine dissenting votes in the ]<ref>{{cite web|title=Senate Vote #126 (May 15, 1924)|url=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s68_1-126&sort=vote|work=govtrack.us|publisher=Civic Impulse, LLC|access-date=20 May 2011}}</ref> and a handful of opponents in the ], the most vigorous of whom was freshman ] Representative ], a ]. Decades later, he pointed out the act's "startling discrimination against central, eastern and southern Europe."<ref name="cq">{{cite journal|title=Immigration and Nationality Act|journal=]|year=1952|url=https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal52-1380984}} {{subscription required}}</ref>
* “The instinct for national and race preservation is not one to be condemned, as has been intimated here. No one should be better able to understand the desire of Americans to keep America American than the gentleman from Illinois , who is leading the attack on this measure, or the gentlemen from New York, Mr. Dickstein, Mr. Jacobstein, Mr. Celler, and Mr. Perlman. They are of the one great historic people who have maintained the identity of their race throughout the centuries because they believe sincerely that they are a chosen people, with certain ideals to maintain, and knowing that the loss of racial identity means a change of ideals. That fact should make it easy for them and the majority of the most active opponents of this measure in the spoken debate to recognize and sympathize with our viewpoint, which is not so extreme as that of their own race, but only demands that the admixture of other peoples shall be only of such kind and proportions and in such quantities as will not alter racial characteristics more rapidly than there can be assimilation as to ideas of government as well as of blood.


Proponents of the act sought to establish a distinct American identity by preserving its ethnic homogeneity.<ref name=jones277>{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Maldwyn Allen|author-link=Maldwyn Jones|title=American Immigration|location=Chicago|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1992|orig-year=1960 |edition=2nd|isbn=978-0226406336|page=237}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Who Was Shut Out?: Immigration Quotas, 1925–1927|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5078|work=History Matters|publisher=]|access-date=January 3, 2012}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite book |first=George M. |last=Stephenson |title=A History of American Immigration. 1820–1924 |location=New York |publisher=Russel & Russel |year=1964 |page=190}}</ref> 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 ], and were unable to adapt to ].<ref name=jones277 /> 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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics|last=Baynton|first=Douglas C.|publisher=Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press|year=2016|isbn=978-0-226-36433-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zdrFDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45|page=45}}</ref> ], himself a Jewish immigrant from Britain and the founder of the ] (AFL), supported the act because he opposed the cheap labor that immigration represented even though the act would sharply reduce Jewish immigration.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/issues/unions/what-samuel-gompers-had-say-about-illega.html |first=Samuel |last=Gompers |title=Immigration and labor |access-date=February 1, 2009 |archive-date=February 5, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090205035035/http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/issues/unions/what-samuel-gompers-had-say-about-illega.html |url-status=dead }}{{subscription required}}</ref> Both the AFL and the ] supported the act.<ref name=koven>Steven G. Koven, Frank Götzke, '''' (Springer, 2010), p. 133</ref> Historian ] concludes: "Klan backing made no material difference. Congress was expressing the will of the nation.".<ref>John Higham, ''Strangers in the land: Patterns of American nativism, 1860-1925'' (Rutgers University Press, 1955) p. 321.</ref>
See: ], ], ]


] signs the Immigration Act on the ] along with appropriation bills for the ]. ] is on the left.]]
==Possible Anti-Semitism==
Lobbyists from the ], 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 and{{Snd}}to a lesser degree{{Snd}}Korean and Filipino laborers began arriving and putting down roots in ], an exclusionary movement formed in reaction to the "]." ], the founder of ] and a leader of the ] movement, argued, "They come here specifically and professedly for the purpose of colonizing and establishing here permanently the proud ]." He cites their supposed inability to assimilate to American culture and the economic threat that they posed to white businessmen and farmers.<ref name=Imai/>
While motivated by a desire to preserve an ethnic status quo, these laws may also have been motivated partly by ], since during this period opposition to immigration was perceived as mainly a Jewish issue. This certainly appears to have been the perception of Jewish observers: for example, prominent Jewish writer ] (1924), writing in the immediate aftermath of the 1924 legislation, wrote that "it is chiefly against the Jew that anti-immigration laws are passed here in America as in England and Germany" (p. 217),' and such perceptions continue among historians of the period (e.g., Hertzberg 1989, 239).


Opposing the act, U.S. Secretary of State ] said, "The legislation would seem to be quite unnecessary, even for the purpose for which it is devised."<ref>{{cite book |last=Durant |first=Will |author-link=Will Durant |title=The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage |date=1935 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York}}</ref> The act faced strong opposition from the Japanese government with which the U.S. government had maintained a cordial economic and political relationship.<ref name=Imai/> In Japan, the bill was called by some the "Japanese Exclusion" act.<ref name=":4" /> Japanese Foreign Minister ] instructed the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., ], to write to Hughes:
This perception was not restricted to Jews. In remarks before the Senate, the anti-restrictionist Senator Reed of Missouri noted that "Attacks have likewise been made upon the Jewish people who have crowded to our shores. The spirit of intolerance has been especially active as to them" (Cong. Rec. Feb. 19, 1921; p. 3463), and during ] Secretary of War ] stated that it was opposition to unrestricted immigration of Jews that resulted in the restrictive legislation of 1924. (Breitman & Kraut, 1987, p. 87).
{{blockquote|the manifest object of the is to single out Japanese as a nation, stigmatizing them as unworthy and undesirable in the eyes of the American people. And yet the actual result of that particular provision, if the proposed bill becomes law as intended, would be only to exclude 146 Japanese per year.... I realize, as I believe you do, the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure retaining that particular provision would inevitably bring upon the otherwise happy and mutually advantageous relations between our two countries.<ref>{{cite journal |title=International Documents |journal=Advocate of Peace |date=1924 |volume=86 |page=311 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QPg4AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA311 |publisher=American Peace Society}}</ref>}}


Wisconsin Senator ], who did not vote on the bill, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said that the bill would have to be revisioned "to make its operation simple, humane, and free from the misery and disappointment to which would-be immigrants are now subjected."<ref>La Follette Makes Statement on Ku Klux Klan, Immigration, Minority Rights and Zionism; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 15, 1924</ref>
The House Immigration Committee Majority Report (House Report #109, Dec. 6, 1920) stated that "by far the largest percentage of immigrants (are) peoples of Jewish extraction," (p. 4), and it implied that the majority of the expected new immigrants would be Polish Jews. The report 'confirmed the published statement of a commissioner of the Hebrew Sheltering and Aid Society of America made after his personal investigation in Poland, to the effect that 'If there were in existence a ship that could hold 3,000,000 human beings, the 3,000,000 Jews of Poland would board it to escape to America'' (p. 6).


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 ], and he was unable to form a compromise, President ] declined to use his ] power to block the act,<ref name="Duus">{{cite book|last=Duus|first=Masayo Umezawa|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H68wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA306|title=The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920|publisher=University of California Press|year=1999|isbn=9780520204850|location=Berkeley, CA|pages=306–7}}</ref> although both houses passed it by a veto-overriding two-thirds majority. The act was signed into law on May 24, 1924.<ref name=":3" />
The Majority Report also included a report by ], head of the United States Consular Service, that stated that the ] Jews were "abnormally twisted because of (a) reaction from war strain; (b) the shock of revolutionary disorders; (c) the dullness and stultification resulting from past years of oppression and abuse... ; Eighty-five to ninety percent lack any conception of patriotic or national spirit. And the majority of this percentage are unable to acquire it' (p. 9; see also Breitman and Kraut


==Provisions==
Consular reports warned that "many ] sympathizers are in Poland". (p. 11)
]


The immigration act made permanent the basic limitations on ] established in 1921 and modified the ], which had been established in that year. In conjunction with the ], it governed American immigration policy until the ], which revised it completely, was passed.
==Passage==
The bill passed with strong congressional support (only 6 dissenting votes in the Senate) and was signed into law on ], ] by President ]. As an example of its effect, in the ten years following ] about 200,000 ] immigrated every year. With the imposition of the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed. At the same time, the annual quota for Germany was over 57,000. 86% of the 165,000 permitted entries were from the ], ], ], and other Northern European countries.


The act provided that no alien ineligible to become a citizen could be admitted to the U.S. as an immigrant. That was aimed primarily at Japanese aliens,<ref name=gov/> although they were not explicitly named in the act.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Zhao|editor-first1=Xiaojian|editor-last2=Park|editor-first2=Edward J. W.|last1=Sohi|first1=Seema|title=Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3AxIAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA535|year=2013|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-59884-240-1|page=535}}</ref> It imposed fines on transportation companies who landed aliens in violation of ]. It defined the term "immigrant" and designated all other alien entries into the U.S. as "non-immigrant," or temporary visitors. It also established classes of admission for such non-immigrants.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Beaman|first=Middleton|date=1924|title=CURRENT LEGISLATION: The Immigration Act of 1924|journal=American Bar Association Journal|volume=10|issue=7|pages=490–492|issn=0002-7596|jstor=25709038}}</ref>
The law was altered with the ] of 1952, which raised the number of visas granted to East and Southern European immigrants to 30 percent. The act was eventually overturned with the ].

The act set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the ], an 80% reduction from average before World War I, and barred immigrants from Asia, including Japan.<ref name=Guisepi /> However, the ] was then a ] and so its citizens were ] and could thus travel freely to the U.S.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act|title=Milestones: 1921–1936 - Office of the Historian|website=history.state.gov|access-date=2020-01-25}}</ref> The act did not include China since it was already barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 1924 act reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their ] (as defined by the ] of 1921) to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of any nationality residing in the U.S. according to the ].<ref name=koven/> A more recent census existed, but at the behest of a eugenics subcommittee chaired by eugenicist ], Congress used the 1890 one to increase immigrants from Northern and Western Europe and to decrease those from Eastern and Southern Europe.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|date=January 1925|title=Outstanding Features of the Immigration Act of 1924|journal=Columbia Law Review|volume=25|issue=1|pages=90–95|doi=10.2307/1113499|jstor=1113499}}</ref> According to ], 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."<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Gee|first=Melody S.|date=September 7, 2020|title=Making an American|url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/making-american|access-date=May 6, 2021|magazine=Commonweal}}</ref>

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 ].<ref name=":5">. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210323020221/https://loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/68th-congress/session-1/c68s1ch190.pdf |date=March 23, 2021 }}</ref><ref name=":2" /> However, this did little to diversify the nations from which immigrants came because the 1920 census did not include Blacks, Mulattos, and Asians as part of the American population used for the quotas.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} The lowest quota per country was 100 individuals,<ref name=":5" /> but even then only those eligible for citizenship could immigrate to the U.S. (i.e. only whites in China could immigrate).{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} Establishing national origin quotas for the country proved to be a difficult task, and was not accepted and completed until 1929.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ngai|first=Mae M.|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400850235|title=Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America|date=2014-01-31|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-5023-5|location=Princeton|doi=10.1515/9781400850235 }}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2021}} 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.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=Coolidge signs Immigration Act of 1924|url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/coolidge-signs-stringent-immigration-law|access-date=2020-01-25|website=HISTORY|language=en}}</ref>

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 ],{{clarify|date=October 2023}} but this was not more fully achieved until ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Digital History |url=https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1116#:~:text=Subsequent%20amendments%20eliminated%20certain%20elements,and%20Nationality%20Act%20of%201952). |website=www.digitalhistory.uh.edu}}</ref>

===Quota calculation formula===
In 1927, the 1924 act was modified to use census data from 1920. The ] and ] estimated the ''National Origins of the White Population of the United States in 1920'' in numbers,{{Clarify|reason=Is this italicized text a name of a document? Need a secondary source or quote to explain why this is different from the raw 1920 census data.|date=August 2021}} 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.<ref name="statabstract1930">{{citation|date=July 1930|title=Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1930.|url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1930/compendia/statab/52ed/1930-04.pdf|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce|pages=102–105|edition=52nd|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210326085609/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1930/compendia/statab/52ed/1930-04.pdf|archive-date=March 26, 2021|access-date=August 9, 2021}}</ref><ref name="statabstract1931">{{citation|date=August 1931|title=Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1931.|url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1931/compendia/statab/53ed/1931-03.pdf|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce|pages=103–107|edition=53rd|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210329144712/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1931/compendia/statab/53ed/1931-03.pdf|archive-date=March 29, 2021|access-date=August 10, 2021}}</ref><ref name="statabstract1966" />
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! style="text-align:center; background:#9dbec3;"|'''Country of origin'''
! style="text-align:center; background:#9dbec3;"|'''Population count'''
! style="text-align:center; background:#9dbec3;"|'''Percentage share'''
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagdeco|Austria|state}} ]
|align="right"|{{nts|843,000}}
|align="right"|0.942%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Belgium}}
|align="right"|{{nts|778,000}}
|align="right"|0.869%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|First Czechoslovak Republic}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,715,000}}
|align="right"|1.916%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Denmark}}
|align="right"|{{nts|705,000}}
|align="right"|0.788%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Estonia}}
|align="right"|{{nts|69,000}}
|align="right"|0.077%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Finland}}
|align="right"|{{nts|339,000}}
|align="right"|0.379%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|French Third Republic}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,842,000}}
|align="right"|2.058%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Weimar Republic}}
|align="right"|{{nts|15,489,000}}
|align="right"|17.305%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Greece|state}}
|align="right"|{{nts|183,000}}
|align="right"|0.204%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)}}
|align="right"|{{nts|519,000}}
|align="right"|0.580%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Irish Free State|name=Ireland}}
|align="right"|{{nts|10,653,000}}
|align="right"|11.902%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Italy}}
|align="right"|{{nts|3,462,000}}
|align="right"|3.868%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Latvia}}
|align="right"|{{nts|141,000}}
|align="right"|0.158%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Lithuania}}
|align="right"|{{nts|230,000}}
|align="right"|0.257%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Netherlands}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,881,000}}
|align="right"|2.102%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Norway}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,419,000}}
|align="right"|1.585%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Second Polish Republic}}
|align="right"|{{nts|3,893,000}}
|align="right"|4.349%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagdeco|Portugal}} ]
|align="right"|{{nts|263,000}}
|align="right"|0.294%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Romania}}
|align="right"|{{nts|176,000}}
|align="right"|0.197%
|-
|border = "1"|{{nowrap|{{flag|RSFSR|1918|name=Russia}} (part of {{flag|Soviet Union|1936|name=USSR}})}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,661,000}}
|align="right"|1.856%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagdeco|Kingdom of Spain|1874}} ]
|align="right"|{{nts|150,000}}
|align="right"|0.168%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Sweden}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,977,000}}
|align="right"|2.209%
|-
|border = "1"|{{nowrap|{{flagdeco|Syria|1932}} ] & {{flagdeco|Lebanon|1920}} ]}}
|align="right"|{{nts|73,000}}
|align="right"|0.082%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Switzerland}}
|align="right"|{{nts|1,019,000}}
|align="right"|1.138%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|Turkey}}
|align="right"|{{nts|135,000}}
|align="right"|0.151%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flag|United Kingdom}}
|align="right"|{{nts|39,216,000}}
|align="right"|43.814%
|-
|border = "1"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Yugoslavia}}
|align="right"|{{nts|504,000}}
|align="right"|0.563%
|-
|border = "1"|'''1920 {{flag|USA}} Total'''
|align="right"|'''{{nts|89,507,000}}'''
|align="right"|'''100.000%'''
|}

===Quotas by country under successive laws===
Listed below are historical quotas on emigration from the ], 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.<ref name="ABA1924">{{cite journal|date=July 1924|journal=American Bar Association Journal|volume=10|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25709038|publisher=American Bar Association|pages=490–492|last=Beaman|first=Middleton|issue=7|title=CURRENT LEGISLATION: The Immigration Act of 1924.|jstor=25709038 |access-date=August 10, 2021}}</ref><ref name="statabstract1922">{{citation|date=July 1923|title=Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1922.|url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1923/compendia/statab/45ed/1922-03.pdf|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce|pages=100–101|edition=45th|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210329121443/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1923/compendia/statab/45ed/1922-03.pdf|archive-date=March 29, 2021|access-date=August 10, 2021}}</ref><ref name="statabstract1924">{{citation|date=July 1925|title=Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1924.|url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1925/compendia/statab/47ed/1924-02.pdf|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce|page=83|edition=47th|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210328004741/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1925/compendia/statab/47ed/1924-02.pdf|archive-date=March 28, 2021|access-date=August 10, 2021}}</ref><ref name="statabstract1930" /><ref name="statabstract1931" /><ref name="statabstract1966">{{cite journal|date=July 1966|title=Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1966.|journal=Statistical Abstract of the United States ...: Finance, Coinage, Commerce, Immigration, Shipping, the Postal Service, Population, Railroads, Agriculture, Coal and Iron |url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1966/compendia/statab/87ed/1966-02.pdf|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=U.S. Bureau of the Census|pages=89–93|lccn=04-018089|issn=0081-4741|oclc=781377180|edition=87th|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210328113257/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1966/compendia/statab/87ed/1966-02.pdf|archive-date=March 28, 2021|access-date=August 9, 2021}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right"
|-
!rowspan="2"|Annual ]
!colspan="2"|]||colspan="4"|Act of 1924||colspan="2"|]
|-
!1922{{efn|Quota per country limited to 3% of the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in the 1910 census (FY 1922-1924)}}
!%
!1925{{efn|Quota per country limited to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in the 1890 census (FY 1925-1929)}}
!%
!1930{{efn|Quota per nationality limited to a percentage share of 150,000 in a ratio proportional to the number of U.S. inhabitants of that national origin as a share of all U.S. inhabitants in the 1920 census (FY 1930-1952)}}
!%
!1965{{efn|Quota per nationality limited to one-sixth of 1% of the number of U.S. inhabitants of that national origin in the 1920 census (FY 1953-1965)}}
!%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagdeco|Albania|1920}} ]
| 288
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|First Republic of Armenia}}
| 230
| 0.06%
| 124
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagdeco|Austria|state}} ]
| 7,451
| 2.08%
| 785
| 0.48%
| 1,413
| 0.92%
| 1,405
| 0.89%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Belgium}}
| 1,563
| 0.44%
| 512
| 0.31%
| 1,304
| 0.85%
| 1,297
| 0.82%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Bulgaria}}
| 302
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|First Czechoslovak Republic}}
| 14,357
| 4.01%
| 3,073
| 1.87%
| 2,874
| 1.87%
| 2,859
| 1.80%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Danzig}}
| 301
| 0.08%
| 228
| 0.14%
| 100
| 0.07%
|
|
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Denmark}}
| 5,619
| 1.57%
| 2,789
| 1.69%
| 1,181
| 0.77%
| 1,175
| 0.74%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Estonia}}
| 1,348
| 0.38%
| 124
| 0.08%
| 116
| 0.08%
| 115
| 0.07%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Finland}}
| 3,921
| 1.10%
| 471
| 0.29%
| 569
| 0.37%
| 566
| 0.36%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Fiume}}
| 71
| 0.02%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|French Third Republic}}
| 5,729
| 1.60%
| 3,954
| 2.40%
| 3,086
| 2.01%
| 3,069
| 1.94%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Weimar Republic}}
| 67,607
| 18.90%
| 51,227
| 31.11%
| 25,957
| 16.89%
| 25,814
| 16.28%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Greece|state}}
| 3,294
| 0.92%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 307
| 0.20%
| 308
| 0.19%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)}}
| 5,638
| 1.58%
| 473
| 0.29%
| 869
| 0.57%
| 865
| 0.55%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagdeco|Iceland}} ]
| 75
| 0.02%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Irish Free State|name=Ireland}}
| {{efn|name=uk|From 1921 to 1924, quota for ] encompassed all of Ireland; after 1925, only ], with a separate quota created for the ]}}
|
| 28,567
| 17.35%
| 17,853
| 11.61%
| 17,756
| 11.20%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Italy}}
| 42,057
| 11.75%
| 3,854
| 2.34%
| 5,802
| 3.77%
| 5,666
| 3.57%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Latvia}}
| 1,540
| 0.43%
| 142
| 0.09%
| 236
| 0.15%
| 235
| 0.15%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Lithuania}}
| 2,460
| 0.69%
| 344
| 0.21%
| 386
| 0.25%
| 384
| 0.24%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Luxembourg}}
| 92
| 0.03%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Netherlands}}
| 3,607
| 1.01%
| 1,648
| 1.00%
| 3,153
| 2.05%
| 3,136
| 1.98%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Norway}}
| 12,202
| 3.41%
| 6,453
| 3.92%
| 2,377
| 1.55%
| 2,364
| 1.49%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Second Polish Republic}}
| 31,146
| 8.70%
| 5,982
| 3.63%
| 6,524
| 4.24%
| 6,488
| 4.09%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagdeco|Portugal}} ]
| 2,465
| 0.69%
| 503
| 0.31%
| 440
| 0.29%
| 438
| 0.28%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Romania}}
| 7,419
| 2.07%
| 603
| 0.37%
| 295
| 0.19%
| 289
| 0.18%
|-
| align="left"|{{nowrap|{{flag|RSFSR|1918|name=Russia}} (part of {{flag|Soviet Union|1936|name=USSR}})}}{{efn|] excluding regions falling under the ] while in effect}}
| 24,405
| 6.82%
| 2,248
| 1.37%
| 2,784
| 1.81%
| 2,697
| 1.70%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagdeco|Kingdom of Spain|1874}} ]
| 912
| 0.25%
| 131
| 0.08%
| 252
| 0.16%
| 250
| 0.16%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Sweden}}
| 20,042
| 5.60%
| 9,561
| 5.81%
| 3,314
| 2.16%
| 3,295
| 2.08%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Switzerland}}
| 3,752
| 1.05%
| 2,081
| 1.26%
| 1,707
| 1.11%
| 1,698
| 1.07%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|Turkey}}
| 2,388
| 0.67%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 226
| 0.15%
| 225
| 0.14%
|-
| align="left"|{{flag|United Kingdom}}{{efn|name=uk}}
| 77,342
| 21.62%
| 34,007
| 20.65%
| 65,721
| 42.76%
| 65,361
| 41.22%
|-
| align="left"|{{flagcountry|Kingdom of Yugoslavia}}
| 6,426
| 1.80%
| 671
| 0.41%
| 845
| 0.55%
| 942
| 0.59%
|-
| align="left"|{{nowrap|{{flag|Australia}} and {{flag|New Zealand}}}}
| 359
| 0.10%
| 221
| 0.13%
| 200
| 0.13%
| 700
| 0.44%
|-
| align="left"|Total from ]
| 356,135
| 99.53%
| 161,546
| 98.10%
| 150,591
| 97.97%
| 149,697
| 94.41%
|-
| align="left"|Total from ]
| 1,066
| 0.30%
| 1,300
| 0.79%
| 1,323
| 0.86%
| 3,690
| 2.33%
|-
| align="left"|Total from ]
| 122
| 0.03%
| 1,200
| 0.73%
| 1,200
| 0.78%
| 4,274
| 2.70%
|-
| align="left"|'''Total from all Countries'''
| '''357,803'''
| '''100.00%'''
| '''164,667'''
| '''100.00%'''
| '''153,714'''
| '''100.00%'''
| '''158,561'''
| '''100.00%'''
|-
|}
{{notelist}}

==Visas and border control==
The act also established the "consular control system" of immigration, which divided responsibility for immigration between the ] and the ]. The act also mandated no alien to be allowed to enter the U.S. without a valid immigration ] issued by an American ] abroad.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Beaman|first=Middleton|date=1924|title=CURRENT LEGISLATION: The Immigration Act of 1924|journal=American Bar Association Journal|volume=10|issue=7|pages=490–492|issn=0002-7596|jstor=25709038}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":1" />

===Establishment of Border Patrol===
The National Origins Act authorized the formation of the ], which was established two days after the act was passed, primarily to guard the ].<ref name=Airriess40>Airriess, Christopher A.; ''Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America'', p. . {{ISBN|1442218576}}</ref> A $10 tax was imposed on Mexican immigrants, who were allowed to continue immigrating based on their perceived willingness to provide cheap labor.

==Results==
], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ]}} (red) and Southern and Eastern Europe{{efn|Defined in the act as immigrants from the ], all ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ]}} (blue) in the decades before and after the act]]

The act was seen in a negative light in Japan, causing resignations of ambassadors and protests.<ref name=":3">{{Cite magazine|last=Atkinson|first=David C.|date=2017-02-03|title=What History Can Tell Us About the Fallout From Restricting Immigration|url=https://time.com/4659392/history-fallout-restricting-immigration/|access-date=2020-11-14|magazine=]}}</ref> A citizen committed '']'' near the ] with a note that read: "Appealing to the American people".<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last1=Chow|first1=Misuzu Hanihara|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DzyVDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA124|title=The Turning Point in US-Japan Relations: Hanihara's Cherry Blossom Diplomacy in 1920–1930|last2=Chuma|first2=Kiyofuku|publisher=Springer|year=2016|isbn=978-1-349-58154-2|pages=125|language=en}}</ref> 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'.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ngai|first=Mae|title=Impossible Subjects: illegal aliens and the makings of modern America|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2004|location=Princeton|pages=49}}</ref>

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.<ref name=neiwert>{{citation |last=Neiwert |first=Daniel |title=The xenophobic career of Miller Freeman, founding father of modern Bellevue | newspaper=] |date=May 10, 2022 |url=https://iexaminer.org/the-xenophobic-career-of-miller-freeman-founding-father-of-modern-bellevue/}}</ref> According to David C. Atkinson, on the Japanese 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 ]".<ref name=":3" />

The act's revised formula reduced total emigration from 357,803 between 1923 and 1924 to 164,667 between 1924 and 1925.<ref name="Airriess40" /> The law's impact varied widely by country. Emigration from ] and ] fell 19%, while emigration from Italy fell more than 90%.<ref>{{cite book |first=Robert K. |last=Murray |title=The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and the Disaster in Madison Square Garden |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1976 |page= |isbn=978-0-06-013124-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/103rdballotdemoc0000murr/page/7 }}</ref> From 1901 to 1914, 2.9 million Italians immigrated, an average of 210,000 per year.<ref>'''', Series B 304–330 (p. 33). US Bureau of the Census, 1949.{{Original research inline|date=February 2019}}</ref> Under the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed since the 1890 quota counted only 182,580 Italians in the U.S.<ref name=stats>'''', Series B 304–330 (p. 32). US Bureau of the Census, 1949.</ref> 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.<ref name=stats/> Germany, Britain, and Ireland had the highest representation in 1890.<ref name=stats/> 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 U.S. than arrived as immigrants.<ref name=koven/>

During World War II, the U.S. modified the act to set immigration quotas for their allies in China.<ref name=Guisepi /> The immigration quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced in the ].<ref name="gov" /><ref name=":9">{{Cite magazine|last=Cobb|first=Jelani|date=September 5, 2017|title=Trump's Move to End DACA and Echoes of the Immigration Act of 1924|url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-move-to-end-daca-and-echoes-of-the-immigration-act-of-1924|access-date=2020-10-20|magazine=The New Yorker|language=en-us}}</ref>

===Jewish migration===
The law sharply curtailed emigration from countries that were previously host to the vast majority of the Jews in the U.S., almost 75% of whom emigrated from Russia alone.<ref name=Wright>Stuart J. Wright, ''An Emotional Gauntlet: From Life in Peacetime America to the War in European Skies'' (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p.&nbsp;163</ref> Because Eastern European immigration did not become substantial until the late 19th century, the law's use of the population of the U.S. in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the ] lived at the time, impossible.<ref>Julian Levinson, ''Exiles on Main Street: Jewish American Writers and American Literary Culture'' (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 54</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-century.html|title=A Century of Immigration, 1820-1924 - From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America|website=]|date=9 September 2004|access-date=February 10, 2019}}</ref> 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.<ref name=cq/><ref name=ushmm/><ref name=Airriess40/>

The act was seen as causing many Jews to instead immigrate to ], spurring the ].<ref name=gur>{{Cite journal |last=Alroey |first=Gur |date=2017-05-04 |title="Between the straits": Jewish immigration to the United States and Palestine, 1915–1925 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501674.2017.1400859 |journal=East European Jewish Affairs |language=en |volume=47 |issue=2-3 |pages=150–168 |doi=10.1080/13501674.2017.1400859 |issn=1350-1674}}</ref> In 1937, the ] noted the act spurred immigration levels not anticipated during the drafting of the 1922 ].<ref name=gur/><ref>. His Majesty's Stationery Office., London, 1937. p 289 ]</ref>

The law was not modified to aid the flight of ] in the 1930s or 1940s despite the rise of ].{{efn|On May 18, 1937, the Omnibus Immigration Bill entered Congress, which was intended to naturalize Jews who had ]. It was supported by a majority, including most Republicans, future Democrat President ], as well as Southern ']s'.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Smallwood|first=James|title=Operation Texas: Lyndon B. Johnson, The Jewish Question and the Nazi Holocaust|date=March 2009|journal=East Texas Historical Journal|volume=47|issue=1|url=https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2560&context=ethj}}</ref>}}{{efn|President ] invited 982 refugees, most of whom were Jewish, to stay at ] until the war was over.<ref>{{cite news |last=Bernard |first=Diane |title=Jews fleeing the Holocaust weren't welcome in the U.S. Then FDR finally offered a refuge to some. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/01/jews-fleeing-holocaust-werent-welcome-us-then-fdr-finally-offered-refuge-some |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=May 3, 2019 |date=May 1, 2019}}</ref>}} The quotas were adjusted to allow more Jewish refugees after ], but without increasing immigration overall.<ref name=ushmm>{{cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/united-states-immigration-and-refugee-law-1921-1980|title=United States Immigration and Refugee Law, 1921–1980|website=]|access-date=February 9, 2019}}</ref>

==Legacy==
The act has been characterized as the culmination of decades of intentional exclusion of Asian immigrants.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Zhou|first=Li|date=May 5, 2021|title=The inadequacy of the term "Asian American"|url=https://www.vox.com/identities/22380197/asian-american-pacific-islander-aapi-heritage-anti-asian-hate-attacks|access-date=2021-05-06|website=Vox|language=en}}</ref>

The act had negative economic effects. Economists have argued that both innovation and employment were negatively affected by the restrictions. In a 2020 paper, the economists ] and Shmuel San demonstrated that the drastic reduction in immigration from Eastern and Southern European scientists led to fewer new patents, not only from immigrants but also from native-born scientists working in their fields.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Moser |first1=Petra |last2=San |first2=Shmuel |date=March 21, 2020 |title=Immigration, Science, and Invention. Lessons from the Quota Acts |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3558718 |journal= |ssrn=3558718 |via=SSRN}}</ref> Even the mass migration of unskilled workers had been a spur to innovation, according to a paper by Kirk Doran and Chungeun Yoon, who found "using variation induced by 1920s quotas, which ended history's largest international migration" that "inventors in cities and industries exposed to fewer low-skilled immigrants applied for fewer patents."<ref>{{Citation |last1=Duran |first1=Kirk |last2=Yoon |first2=Chungeun |date=January 2021 |title=Immigration and Invention: Evidence from the Quota Acts |url=https://www3.nd.edu/~kdoran/Doran_Quotas.pdf |journal=}}</ref> Nor did US-born workers benefit, according to a 2023 study in the ''American Economic Journal.'' Farming, a sector of the economy highly reliant on migrant labor, shifted towards more capital-intensive forms of agriculture, whereas the mining industry, another immigrant-reliant industry, contracted.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Abramitzky |first1=Ran |last2=Ager |first2=Philipp |last3=Boustan |first3=Leah |last4=Cohen |first4=Elior |last5=Hansen |first5=Casper W. |date=2023 |title=The Effect of Immigration Restrictions on Local Labor Markets: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure |url=https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20200807 |journal=American Economic Journal: Applied Economics |language=en |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=164–191 |doi=10.1257/app.20200807 |s2cid=240158682 |issn=1945-7782}}</ref>

Looking back on the significance of the act, ], 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 ] as a theoretical foundation for immigration policy.<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Jacobson |first=Matthew Frye |url=https://archive.org/details/whitenessofdiffe0000jaco/page/82/ |title=Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0674951913 |location=Cambridge |pages=82–83, 85 |language=en |author-link=Matthew Frye Jacobson}}</ref> Due to the reliance upon eugenics in forming the policy, and growing public reception towards scientific racism as justification for restriction and ] by 1924, the act has been seen as a piece of legislation that formalized the views of contemporary U.S. society.<ref>{{Cite book|last=King|first=Desmond|url=https://archive.org/details/makingamericans00desm/page/195/mode/2up|title=Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2000|isbn=0-674-00088-9|location=Cambridge|pages=195|author-link=Desmond King (professor)}}</ref> Historian ] writes of the national origins quota system:

<blockquote>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 ] race, in which persons of European descent shared a common Whiteness distinct from those deemed to be not White.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ngai|first=Mae M.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X1dzAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24|title=Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-691-16082-5|location=Woodstock, Oxfordshire|pages=24–25}}</ref> </blockquote>

In 1928, Nazi leader ] praised the act for banishing "strangers of the blood".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Podolsky |first=Robin |date=2021-02-23 |title=Purim: A Celebration of Difference and a Call to Action |url=https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/333457/purim-a-celebration-of-difference-and-a-call-to-action/ |access-date=2024-04-16 |website=] |language=en-US}}</ref> U.S. immigration law was cited favorably by the framers of Nazi legislation due to its excluding "wholly foreign racial population masses".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Young |first=Patrick |date=2018-08-30 |title=When America's Racist Immigration Law Inspired Hitler |url=https://longislandwins.com/immigration-history/when-americas-racist-immigration-law-inspired-hitler/ |access-date=2024-04-16 |website=Long Island Wins |language=en-US}}</ref>{{efn|Sources such as '']'' argue that the ] movement includes an attempt to return to the exclusion of pre-1965 U.S. immigration law.<ref name=":9" />}}


==See also== ==See also==
* ]
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* {{annotated link|Indian Citizenship Act}}
* ] * ]
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==References==
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'''Footnotes'''
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{{notelist}}


'''Citations'''
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{{Reflist|30em}}
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==Further reading==
* Allerfeldt, Kristofer. "'And We Got Here First': Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s." ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 45.1 (2010): 7-26.
* {{Cite news|last=Diamond|first=Anna|date=May 19, 2020|title=The 1924 Law That Slammed the Door on Immigrants and the Politicians Who Pushed it Back Open|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/|access-date=2021-05-06|website=Smithsonian Magazine|language=en}}
* {{cite journal|last=Eckerson|first=Helen F.|year=1966|title=Immigration and National Origins|journal=Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science|volume=367|series=The New Immigration|pages=4–14|jstor=1034838|doi=10.1177/000271626636700102|s2cid=144501178}}
* Higham, John. ''Strangers in the land: Patterns of American nativism, 1860-1925'' (2nd ed. Rutgers University Press, 1963) pp 301–330.
* {{Cite book|title=White by law: the legal construction of race|last=Ian|first=Haney-López|date=2006|publisher=New York University Press|isbn=0814736947|edition=Rev. and updated, 10th anniversary|location=New York|oclc=213815614}}
* {{cite journal|last=Johnson|first=Kevin R.|year=1998|title=Race, the Immigration Laws, and Domestic Race Relations: A "Magic Mirror" into the Heart of Darkness|journal=Indiana Law Journal|volume=73|pages=1111–1159|url=https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol73/iss4/2/}}
* Keely, Charles B. "Immigration in the Interwar Period." in ''Immigration and US Foreign Policy'' (Routledge, 2019) pp.&nbsp;43–56.
* Lee, Erika. "America first, immigrants last: American xenophobia then and now." ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' 19.1 (2020): 3–18.
* {{Cite book|title=U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History|editor1-last=Lemay|editor1-first=Michael Robert|editor2-last=Barkan|editor2-first=Elliott Robert|publisher=Greenwood Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-313-30156-8}}
* Marinari, Maddalena. ''Unwanted: Italian and Jewish mobilization against restrictive immigration laws, 1882–1965'' (UNC Press Books, 2019).
* Montoya, Benjamin C. ''Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and US-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924–1932'' (U of Nebraska Press, 2020).
* Ngai, Mae M. "The architecture of race in American immigration law: A reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924." ''Journal of American History'' 86.1 (1999): 67–92.
* {{Cite book|first=Mae M.|last=Ngai|title=Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America|location=Princeton, NJ|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-691-16082-5|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/impossi_nga_2004_00_9423}}
* {{Cite book|last=Yang|first=Jia Lynn|title=One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924–1965|date=2020|isbn=978-0-393-63584-3|location=New York|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|oclc=1120099419}}
* Yuill, Kevin. " 'America must remain American': The Liberal Contribution to Race Restrictions in the 1924 Immigration Act." ''Federal History'' (2021).
* {{cite book|first=Aristide|last=Zolberg|title=A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-674-02218-8}}

==External links==
*
* – transcript of speech given before Congress by Sen. ], April 9, 1924
*
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160924100432/http://library.uwb.edu/static/usimmigration/43%20stat%20153.pdf|title=Text of 1924 Immigration Act and enabling proclamation by the President|date=September 24, 2016|url2=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115123031/https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/68th-congress/session-1/c68s1ch190.pdf|title2=Chapter 190, An Act To limit the immigration of aliens into the United States, and for other purposes, May 26, 1924|date2=November 15, 2020|url3=https://web.archive.org/web/20210120222257/https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/68th-congress.php|title3=Statutes at Large: Congress 68 - Law Library of Congress|date3=January 20, 2021}}
*

{{Calvin Coolidge}}
{{Chinese American|state=collapsed}}
{{Immigration to the United States}}
{{Authority control}}

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Latest revision as of 04:28, 17 December 2024

1924 United States anti-immigration law "Asian Exclusion Act" redirects here. Not to be confused with Chinese Exclusion Act.
Immigration Act of 1924
Great Seal of the United States
Long titleAn Act to limit the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States, and for other purposes.
NicknamesJohnson-Reed Act
Enacted bythe 68th United States Congress
EffectiveMay 26, 1924
Citations
Public lawPub. L. 68–139
Statutes at Large43 Stat. 153
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 7995
  • Passed the House on April 12, 1924 (323–71)
  • Agreed to by the House on May 15, 1924 (308–62) and by the Senate on May 15, 1924 (69–9)
  • Signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on May 24, 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (Pub. L. 68–139, 43 Stat. 153, enacted May 26, 1924), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also authorized the creation of the country's first formal border control service, the U.S. Border Patrol, and established a "consular control system" that allowed entry only to those who first obtained a visa from a U.S. consulate abroad.

Enacted amid increasing public and political anxiety about the country's rapid social and demographic changes, the 1924 act supplanted earlier legislation by vastly reducing immigration from countries outside the Western Hemisphere: Immigrants from Asia were banned, and the total annual immigration quota for the rest of the world was capped at 165,000—an 80% reduction of the yearly average before 1914. The act temporarily reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their 1910 population, per the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, to 2% as recorded in the 1890 census; a new quota was implemented in 1927, based on each nationality's share of the total U.S. population in the 1920 census, which would govern U.S. immigration policy until 1965.

According to the Department of State, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity." The 1924 act would define U.S. immigration policy for nearly three decades, until being substantially revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and ultimately replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Context

See also: History of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States

The Naturalization Act of 1790 declared that only people of European or white descent were eligible for naturalization, but eligibility was extended to people of African descent in the Naturalization Act of 1870. Chinese laborers and Japanese people were barred from immigrating to the U.S. in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the (unenforced) Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907, respectively.

A limitation on Eastern and Southern European 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 houses of Congress, it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland. Another proposal for immigration restriction was introduced again in 1909 by U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The Immigration Act of 1917 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, 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. The First 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 in Russia. 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.

This article is part of a series on the
Eugenics Movement
Historical trajectory
Pre-war academic proponents
Post-war academic remnants
Pamphlets and manifestos
OrganizationsWithout significant post-war activity

With significant post-war activity

Related

U.S. Representative Albert Johnson, a eugenics advocate, and Senator David Reed were the two main architects of the act. They conceived the act as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood"; it likewise found support among xenophobic and nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. However, some proponents, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL), welcomed the act for reducing cheap immigrant labor that would compete with local workers. Both public and Congressional opposition was minimal. In the wake of intense lobbying, it passed with strong congressional support. There were nine dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House of Representatives, the most vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn Representative Emanuel Celler, 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, and were unable to adapt to American culture. 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, 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. Historian John Higham concludes: "Klan backing made no material difference. Congress was expressing the will of the nation.".

President Calvin Coolidge signs the Immigration Act on the White House South Lawn along with appropriation bills for the Veterans Bureau. John J. Pershing is on the left.

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 and – to a lesser degree – Korean and Filipino laborers began arriving and putting down roots in Western United States, an exclusionary movement formed in reaction to the "Yellow Peril." Valentine S. McClatchy, the founder of The McClatchy Company 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 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 instructed the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., Masanao Hanihara, to write to Hughes:

the manifest object of the is to single out Japanese as a nation, stigmatizing them as unworthy and undesirable in the eyes of the American people. And yet the actual result of that particular provision, if the proposed bill becomes law as intended, would be only to exclude 146 Japanese per year.... I realize, as I believe you do, the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure retaining that particular provision would inevitably bring upon the otherwise happy and mutually advantageous relations between our two countries.

Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, who did not vote on the bill, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said that the bill would have to be revisioned "to make its operation simple, humane, and free from the misery and disappointment to which would-be immigrants are now subjected."

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 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

New York Times headline announcing "America of the melting pot comes to end," with before and after map of immigration quotas from Europe, showing preference for immigration from Germany and the United Kingdom

The immigration act made permanent the basic limitations on immigration to the United States established in 1921 and modified the National Origins Formula, which had been established in that year. In conjunction with the Immigration Act of 1917, it governed American immigration policy until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which revised it completely, was passed.

The act provided that no alien ineligible to become a citizen could be admitted to the U.S. 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. It defined the term "immigrant" and designated all other alien entries into the U.S. 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, an 80% reduction from average before World War I, and barred immigrants from Asia, including Japan. However, the Philippines was then a U.S. colony and so its citizens were U.S. nationals and could thus travel freely to the U.S. The act did not include China since it was already barred under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 1924 act reduced the annual quota of any nationality from 3% of their 1910 population (as defined by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921) to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of any nationality residing in the U.S. according to the 1890 census. A more recent census existed, but at the behest of a eugenics subcommittee chaired by eugenicist Madison Grant, 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. However, this did little to diversify the nations from which immigrants came 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 discrimination against women, but this was not more fully achieved until 1952.

Quota calculation formula

In 1927, the 1924 act was modified to use census data from 1920. The Bureau of the Census 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.

Country of origin Population count Percentage share
Austria 843,000 0.942%
 Belgium 778,000 0.869%
 Czechoslovakia 1,715,000 1.916%
 Denmark 705,000 0.788%
 Estonia 69,000 0.077%
 Finland 339,000 0.379%
 France 1,842,000 2.058%
 Germany 15,489,000 17.305%
 Greece 183,000 0.204%
 Hungary 519,000 0.580%
 Ireland 10,653,000 11.902%
 Italy 3,462,000 3.868%
 Latvia 141,000 0.158%
 Lithuania 230,000 0.257%
 Netherlands 1,881,000 2.102%
 Norway 1,419,000 1.585%
 Poland 3,893,000 4.349%
Portugal 263,000 0.294%
 Romania 176,000 0.197%
 Russia (part of  Soviet Union) 1,661,000 1.856%
Spain 150,000 0.168%
 Sweden 1,977,000 2.209%
Syria & Lebanon 73,000 0.082%
  Switzerland 1,019,000 1.138%
 Turkey 135,000 0.151%
 United Kingdom 39,216,000 43.814%
 Yugoslavia 504,000 0.563%
1920  USA Total 89,507,000 100.000%

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.

Annual National Quota Act of 1921 Act of 1924 Act of 1952
1922 % 1925 % 1930 % 1965 %
Albania 288 0.08% 100 0.06% 100 0.07% 100 0.06%
 Armenia 230 0.06% 124 0.08% 100 0.07% 100 0.06%
Austria 7,451 2.08% 785 0.48% 1,413 0.92% 1,405 0.89%
 Belgium 1,563 0.44% 512 0.31% 1,304 0.85% 1,297 0.82%
 Bulgaria 302 0.08% 100 0.06% 100 0.07% 100 0.06%
 Czechoslovakia 14,357 4.01% 3,073 1.87% 2,874 1.87% 2,859 1.80%
 Danzig 301 0.08% 228 0.14% 100 0.07%
 Denmark 5,619 1.57% 2,789 1.69% 1,181 0.77% 1,175 0.74%
 Estonia 1,348 0.38% 124 0.08% 116 0.08% 115 0.07%
 Finland 3,921 1.10% 471 0.29% 569 0.37% 566 0.36%
 Fiume 71 0.02%
 France 5,729 1.60% 3,954 2.40% 3,086 2.01% 3,069 1.94%
 Germany 67,607 18.90% 51,227 31.11% 25,957 16.89% 25,814 16.28%
 Greece 3,294 0.92% 100 0.06% 307 0.20% 308 0.19%
 Hungary 5,638 1.58% 473 0.29% 869 0.57% 865 0.55%
Iceland 75 0.02% 100 0.06% 100 0.07% 100 0.06%
 Ireland 28,567 17.35% 17,853 11.61% 17,756 11.20%
 Italy 42,057 11.75% 3,854 2.34% 5,802 3.77% 5,666 3.57%
 Latvia 1,540 0.43% 142 0.09% 236 0.15% 235 0.15%
 Lithuania 2,460 0.69% 344 0.21% 386 0.25% 384 0.24%
 Luxembourg 92 0.03% 100 0.06% 100 0.07% 100 0.06%
 Netherlands 3,607 1.01% 1,648 1.00% 3,153 2.05% 3,136 1.98%
 Norway 12,202 3.41% 6,453 3.92% 2,377 1.55% 2,364 1.49%
 Poland 31,146 8.70% 5,982 3.63% 6,524 4.24% 6,488 4.09%
Portugal 2,465 0.69% 503 0.31% 440 0.29% 438 0.28%
 Romania 7,419 2.07% 603 0.37% 295 0.19% 289 0.18%
 Russia (part of  Soviet Union) 24,405 6.82% 2,248 1.37% 2,784 1.81% 2,697 1.70%
Spain 912 0.25% 131 0.08% 252 0.16% 250 0.16%
 Sweden 20,042 5.60% 9,561 5.81% 3,314 2.16% 3,295 2.08%
  Switzerland 3,752 1.05% 2,081 1.26% 1,707 1.11% 1,698 1.07%
 Turkey 2,388 0.67% 100 0.06% 226 0.15% 225 0.14%
 United Kingdom 77,342 21.62% 34,007 20.65% 65,721 42.76% 65,361 41.22%
 Yugoslavia 6,426 1.80% 671 0.41% 845 0.55% 942 0.59%
 Australia and  New Zealand 359 0.10% 221 0.13% 200 0.13% 700 0.44%
Total from Europe 356,135 99.53% 161,546 98.10% 150,591 97.97% 149,697 94.41%
Total from Asia 1,066 0.30% 1,300 0.79% 1,323 0.86% 3,690 2.33%
Total from Africa 122 0.03% 1,200 0.73% 1,200 0.78% 4,274 2.70%
Total from all Countries 357,803 100.00% 164,667 100.00% 153,714 100.00% 158,561 100.00%
  1. Quota per country limited to 3% of the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in the 1910 census (FY 1922-1924)
  2. Quota per country limited to 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in the 1890 census (FY 1925-1929)
  3. Quota per nationality limited to a percentage share of 150,000 in a ratio proportional to the number of U.S. inhabitants of that national origin as a share of all U.S. inhabitants in the 1920 census (FY 1930-1952)
  4. Quota per nationality limited to one-sixth of 1% of the number of U.S. inhabitants of that national origin in the 1920 census (FY 1953-1965)
  5. ^ From 1921 to 1924, quota for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland encompassed all of Ireland; after 1925, only Northern Ireland, with a separate quota created for the Irish Free State
  6. USSR excluding regions falling under the Asiatic Barred Zone while in effect

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 U.S. without a valid immigration visa 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. A $10 tax was imposed on Mexican immigrants, who were allowed to continue immigrating based on their perceived willingness to provide cheap labor.

Results

Relative proportions of immigrants from Northwestern Europe (red) and Southern and Eastern Europe (blue) in the decades before and after the act

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 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 Japanese 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 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 and Ireland 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. 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 U.S. than arrived as immigrants.

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.

Jewish migration

The law sharply curtailed emigration from countries that were previously host to the vast majority of the Jews in the U.S., almost 75% of whom emigrated from Russia alone. Because Eastern European immigration did not become substantial until the late 19th century, the law's use of the population of the U.S. in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora 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 act was seen as causing many Jews to instead immigrate to mandatory Palestine, spurring the Fourth Aliyah. In 1937, the Peel Commission noted the act spurred immigration levels not anticipated during the drafting of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine.

The law was not modified to aid the flight of Jewish refugees in the 1930s or 1940s despite the rise of Nazi Germany. The quotas were adjusted to allow more Jewish refugees after World War II, but without increasing immigration overall.

Legacy

The act has been characterized as the culmination of decades of intentional exclusion of Asian immigrants.

The act had negative economic effects. Economists have argued that both innovation and employment were negatively affected by the restrictions. In a 2020 paper, the economists Petra Moser and Shmuel San demonstrated that the drastic reduction in immigration from Eastern and Southern European scientists led to fewer new patents, not only from immigrants but also from native-born scientists working in their fields. Even the mass migration of unskilled workers had been a spur to innovation, according to a paper by Kirk Doran and Chungeun Yoon, who found "using variation induced by 1920s quotas, which ended history's largest international migration" that "inventors in cities and industries exposed to fewer low-skilled immigrants applied for fewer patents." Nor did US-born workers benefit, according to a 2023 study in the American Economic Journal. Farming, a sector of the economy highly reliant on migrant labor, shifted towards more capital-intensive forms of agriculture, whereas the mining industry, another immigrant-reliant industry, contracted.

Looking back on the significance of the act, Harry Laughlin, 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 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 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 race, in which persons of European descent shared a common Whiteness distinct from those deemed to be not White.

In 1928, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler praised the act for banishing "strangers of the blood". U.S. immigration law was cited favorably by the framers of Nazi legislation due to its excluding "wholly foreign racial population masses".

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. Defined in the act as immigrants from Germany, Free City of Danzig, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the British Isles and Scandinavia
  2. Defined in the act as immigrants from the Baltic States, all Slavic nations, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and Greece
  3. On May 18, 1937, the Omnibus Immigration Bill entered Congress, which was intended to naturalize Jews who had entered the country illegally. It was supported by a majority, including most Republicans, future Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as Southern 'Dixiecrats'.
  4. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited 982 refugees, most of whom were Jewish, to stay at Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter until the war was over.
  5. Sources such as The New Yorker argue that the Trumpism movement includes an attempt to return to the exclusion of pre-1965 U.S. immigration law.

Citations

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Further reading

  • Allerfeldt, Kristofer. "'And We Got Here First': Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s." Journal of Contemporary History 45.1 (2010): 7-26.
  • Diamond, Anna (May 19, 2020). "The 1924 Law That Slammed the Door on Immigrants and the Politicians Who Pushed it Back Open". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  • Eckerson, Helen F. (1966). "Immigration and National Origins". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The New Immigration. 367: 4–14. doi:10.1177/000271626636700102. JSTOR 1034838. S2CID 144501178.
  • Higham, John. Strangers in the land: Patterns of American nativism, 1860-1925 (2nd ed. Rutgers University Press, 1963) pp 301–330. online
  • Ian, Haney-López (2006). White by law: the legal construction of race (Rev. and updated, 10th anniversary ed.). New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0814736947. OCLC 213815614.
  • Johnson, Kevin R. (1998). "Race, the Immigration Laws, and Domestic Race Relations: A "Magic Mirror" into the Heart of Darkness". Indiana Law Journal. 73: 1111–1159.
  • Keely, Charles B. "Immigration in the Interwar Period." in Immigration and US Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2019) pp. 43–56.
  • Lee, Erika. "America first, immigrants last: American xenophobia then and now." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19.1 (2020): 3–18. online
  • Lemay, Michael Robert; Barkan, Elliott Robert, eds. (1999). U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-30156-8.
  • Marinari, Maddalena. Unwanted: Italian and Jewish mobilization against restrictive immigration laws, 1882–1965 (UNC Press Books, 2019).
  • Montoya, Benjamin C. Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and US-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924–1932 (U of Nebraska Press, 2020). online
  • Ngai, Mae M. "The architecture of race in American immigration law: A reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924." Journal of American History 86.1 (1999): 67–92. online
  • Ngai, Mae M. (2004). Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16082-5.
  • Yang, Jia Lynn (2020). One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924–1965. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-63584-3. OCLC 1120099419. online
  • Yuill, Kevin. " 'America must remain American': The Liberal Contribution to Race Restrictions in the 1924 Immigration Act." Federal History (2021). online
  • Zolberg, Aristide (2006). A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02218-8.

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