In 1952, the Immigration Act of 1924 continued to regulate legal migration to the US.
This law imposed caps on the number of immigrants each country could send to the US per year, and made those caps proportional to the number of people from that country already living in the US as of the 1890 census. As a result, this formula reflected a less diverse makeup of the population than that of the 1920s, which took in a far larger number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who had come to the United
States between the 1890 census and adoption of the 1924 Act. The quota system thus established severely curtailed the number of new immigrants that could arrive from these countries, and also placed additional restrictions on those coming from non-European nations in the Eastern Hemisphere, like India, China, Japan, and the Pacific islands north of Australia and New Zealand.
1
Seeking to revise this arrangement, Senator Patrick McCarran (D-NV) and
Representative Francis Walter (R-PA) sponsored companion bills in the House and
Senate that collectively became known as the McCarran-Walter bill. Among other reforms, the bill proposed to alter the national origins quota system, open immigration from several countries previously barred by the 1924 Act, establish “preference” classes for immigrants based on profession or citizenship status of spouses and relatives, and exclude certain special categories of aliens like the mentally ill, those “likely to become a public charge,” criminals, communists, and members of subversive organizations.
Though the bill did away with racial quotas in some areas, it reinforced them in others, particularly in the subtitles dealing with immigration from Asia. Rather than basing quotas for this part of the world on national origin, the McCarran-Walter bill stipulated that a person of at least one-half Asian ancestry from a non-quota country – all nations in the Western Hemisphere were exempt from the Act’s quotas – be subject to the quota of his or her Asian ancestor’s country of origin.
The McCarran-Walter bill faced considerable opposition in Congress. In the
Senate, Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and Herbert Lehman (D-NY) introduced an alternative bill March 12 that eliminated racial restrictions against Asians and based national quotas on the 1950 census, reflecting a more ethnically diverse population. In the House, ER’s son Franklin Roosevelt Jr. (D-NY) introduced the companion bill. With
McCarran as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, the Humphrey-
Lehman bill did not gain committee approval, and the McCarran-Walter bill passed in the Senate by a voice vote May 22.
2 The next day, Lehman wrote ER to express his hope that “the President will veto the Bill and that we will be able to muster enough votes to sustain it,” and asked ER,
If you could see your way clear to do so, I am certain it would be very helpful if you could urge the President to veto the Bill which probably will come to him from conference within the next few days.
I know of your deep interest in developing friendly relations with the peoples of
Asia. I believe the McCarran Bill, in its present form, would cause great resentment among Asiatic peoples and handicap, if not nullify, our efforts.
Obviously no one can emphasize this point more forcefully to the President than you.
3

ER acted on Lehman’s request, and wrote President Truman 31 May 1952 on the subject of the McCarran-Walter bill.
Eleanor Roosevelt to Harry Truman
31 May 1952 [Hyde Park, NY]
Dear Mr. President:
I try not to bother you too often but I am very much troubled at the moment about the McCarren-Walters Bill.
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I realize that I can not possibly know much in detail about any legislation and this is a complex and technical subject.
However, I hear that this Bill would generally restrict immigration and make it more difficult than it now is. It would remove the barriers to naturalization for certain
Asiatics and provide a small quota for a number of Asiatic countries which now do not have a quota.
Of course, the removal of racial barriers is all to the good but I understand that this legislation sets up a special classification for persons of Asiatic and Oriental ancestry and sets them completely apart from Europeans and others in a highly restricted category.
I am told that it even defines a fifty percent blood test for persons of Asiatic ancestry no matter where born.
The people of Asia are just at present oversensitive and very proud and I am afraid the enactment of such a bill with these provisions would be very unfortunate. I also think that the Russians would use it for plausible propaganda against us.
Most of us would like to see exclusionist bars go down but not in favor of new ones which would provide fresh evidence that we consider ourselves “superior” to the peoples of Asia.
This legislation may be before you any day for signature and if on mature consideration you think it is really bad, I hope you will veto it, though I realize I can not be familiar with it from every point of view. I am only writing you what my general feeling has been.
Very cordially yours,
Eleanor Roosevelt
TLS HSTPSF, HSTL
1
At the time of the 1924 Immigration Act’s passage, the Chinese Exclusion Act, last amended in 1904, already partially restricted Asian immigration. It originally barred only
“Chinese laborers,” but eventually extended to include all persons of Chinese ethnicity, whether originating from China or not. In 1943, in recognition of the wartime alliance with China against Japan, Congress repealed the Exclusion Act, though quotas for

admitted immigrants from China remained low (Hutchinson, 135, 194-95, 264-65, 430-
32; Auerbach, 18-23).
2
Auerbach, 33-38, 88-90; Hutchinson, 294, 303-6; C.P. Trussell, “Alien Bill Passed
Intact By Senate; Foes Rely on Veto,” NYT , 23 May 1952, 1, 15.
3
Herbert Lehman to ER, 23 May 1952, AERP, FDRL.
4
Should be “McCarran-Walter.”