The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and
Asian Exclusion Act, was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants
who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country
who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration
Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890. It superseded the 1921 Emergency
Quota Act. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Southern
Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. In addition, it severely restricted the immigration
of Africans and prohibited the immigration of Arabs, East Asians, and Indians. According
to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian the purpose of the act was "to
preserve the ideal of American homogeneity". Congressional opposition was minimal.
Provisions The Immigration Act made permanent the basic
limitations on immigration into the United States established in 1921 and modified the
National Origins Formula established then. In conjunction with the Immigration Act of
1917, it governed American immigration policy until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1952, which revised it completely. For the next three years, until June 30, 1927,
the 1924 Act set the annual quota of any nationality at 2% of the number of foreign-born persons
of such nationality resident in the United States in 1890. That revised formula reduced
total immigration from 357,803 in 1923–24 to 164,667 in 1924–25. The law's impact
varied widely by country. Immigration from Great Britain and Ireland fell 19%, while
immigration from Italy fell more than 90%.
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 aged 21 and over.
It also preferred immigrants aged 21 and over who were skilled in agriculture, as well as
their wives and dependent children under age 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 this law's inherent discrimination against women.
The 1924 Act also established the "consular control system" of immigration, which divided
responsibility for immigration between the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. It mandated that no alien should be allowed to enter the United States without
a valid immigration visa issued by an American consular officer abroad.
It provided that no alien ineligible to become a citizen could be admitted to the United
States as an immigrant. This was aimed primarily at Japanese and Chinese aliens. It imposed
fines on transportation companies who landed aliens in violation of U.S. immigration laws.
It defined the term "immigrant" and designated all other alien entries into the United States
as "non-immigrant", that is, temporary visitors. It established classes of admission for such
non-immigrants. History
Restriction of Southern and Eastern European immigration was first proposed in 1909 by
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. In the wake of the Post-World War I recession,
many Americans believed that bringing in more immigrants from other nations would only make
the unemployment rate higher. The Red Scare of 1919–1921 had fueled xenophobic fears
of foreign radicals migrating to undermine American values and provoke an uprising like
Russia's 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The number of immigrants entering the United States decreased
for about a year from July 1919 to June 1920 but also doubled the year after that.
Congressman Albert Johnson and Senator David Reed were the two main architects of the act.
In the wake of intense lobbying, the Act passed with strong congressional support. There were
nine dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House, the most
vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn Representative Emanuel Celler. Over the succeeding four decades,
Celler made the repeal of the Act his personal crusade.
Proponents of the Act sought to establish a distinct American identity by favoring native-born
Americans over Jews, Southern Europeans, and Eastern Europeans in order to "maintain the
racial preponderance of the basic strain on our people and thereby to stabilize the ethnic
composition of the population". 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". Southern/Eastern Europeans and Jews, he believed,
arrived sick and starving and therefore less capable of contributing to the American economy,
and unable to adapt to American culture. Some of the law's strongest supporters were
influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. Grant was a
eugenicist and an advocate of the racial hygiene theory. His data purported to show the superiority
of the founding Northern European races. Most proponents of the law were rather concerned
with upholding an ethnic status quo and avoiding competition with foreign workers. Samuel Gompers,
a Jewish immigrant and founder of the AFL, supported the Act because he opposed the cheap
labor that immigration represented, despite the fact that the Act would sharply reduce
Jewish immigration. Though the law's quota system targeted immigrants
based on their nation of origin rather than race, ethnicity, or religion, Jewish immigration
was a central concern. Hearings about the legislation cited the radical Jewish population
of New York's Lower East Side as the prototype of immigrants who could never be assimilated.
The law sharply curtailed immigration from those countries that were previously host
to the vast majority of the Jews in America, almost 75% of whom immigrated from Russia
alone. Because Eastern European immigration only became substantial in the final decades
of the 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 lived at the time, impossible.
Lobbyists from California, where a majority of Japanese and other East Asian immigrants
had settled, were especially concerned with excluding Asian immigrants. An 1882 law had
already put an end to Chinese immigration, but as Japanese laborers began arriving and
putting down roots in Western states, an exclusionary movement formed in reaction to the "Yellow
Peril." Valentine S. McClatchy, 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," citing
their supposed inability to assimilate to American culture and the economic threat they
posed to white businessmen and farmers. Despite some hesitation from President Calvin Coolidge
and strong opposition from the Japanese government, with which the U.S. government had previously
maintained a cordial economic and political relationship, the act was signed into law
on May 24, 1924. Results
The Act controlled "undesirable" immigration by establishing quotas. The Act barred specific
origins from the Asia–Pacific Triangle, which included Japan, China, the Philippines,
Siam, French Indochina, Singapore, Korea, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, India, Ceylon
and Malaya. Based on the Naturalization Act of 1790, these immigrants, defined as non-white,
were not eligible for naturalization, and the Act forbade further immigration of any
persons ineligible to be naturalized. The Act set no limits on immigration from Latin
American countries. In the 10 years following 1900, about 200,000
Italians immigrated annually. With the imposition of the 1924 quota, 4,000 per year were allowed.
By contrast, the annual quota for Germany after the passage of the Act was over 57,000.
Some 86% of the 155,000 permitted to enter under the Act were from Northern European
countries, with Germany, Britain, and Ireland having the highest quotas. The new quotas
for immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe were so restrictive that in 1924 there
were more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese,
Romanians, Spaniards, Jews, Chinese, and Japanese that left the United States than those who
arrived as immigrants. The quotas remained in place with minor alterations
until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
See also Anti-Italianism
Eugenics in the United States History of laws concerning immigration and
naturalization in the United States Leslie Charteris, specifically exempted from
the provisions of the Act List of United States Immigration Acts
Racial equality proposal White Australia policy
Antisemitism in the United States Yellow Peril
References
Sources Lemay, Michael Robert; Barkan, Elliott Robert,
eds.. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History. Greenwood
Press. ISBN 978-0-313-30156-8. Zolberg, Aristide. A
Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Harvard University
Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02218-8. 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 Text of 1924 Immigration Act and enabling
proclamation by the President Quotas defined in Immigration Law of 1924