20th Cent Immigration to US v3:INTERIOR
6/16/07
12:06 PM
first through Ellis Island lest they be sent
back. Those who did not make it were often stranded in steerage, their lives in legal limbo. Scenes of hysterically weeping
people, ordered by officials back to their
nations of origin, were commonplace.
Despite the problems, lawmakers believed that the quota system was a success.
When the Emergency Quota Act expired
after one year, it was renewed for two
more. Meanwhile, Congress began work
on a bill to put permanent quotas in place.
Using testimony from eugenics researchers and nativist organizations, rep-
Page 41
resentatives in Congress drew up a strict
quota bill in 1923. It reduced annual immigration from 3 percent of the 1910 census to 2 percent of the 1890 census. Since
few eastern and southern Europeans lived
in the United States in 1890, this measure
effectively halted all immigration from
those regions.
Once again, big business opposed the
bill and urged legislators not to pass it because labor shortages and economic expansion were driving wages to record
levels. However, the Ku Klux Klan organized a massive letter-writing campaign to
Once the Emergency Quota Act was enacted in 1921, shiploads of immigrants would race to
be the first to arrive in New York Harbor each month so they would be admitted to the United
States before the monthly quota was met.
20th Cent Immigration to US v3:INTERIOR
6/16/07
12:06 PM
Page 42
“Cleansing Aliens of
Foreign Customs”
Nativist Americans had a dual strategy for dealing with immigration. They wanted to prevent foreigners from moving to the United States and they wanted to “Americanize” immigrants who were already living in the country. Robert A. Divine explains in American
Immigration Policy, 1924–1952.
[
Many people] had been concerned with the assimilation of aliens into American society . . . but gradually this concern had been taken over by more nationalistic groups,
who advocated a strenuous policy of Americanization. Generally it was urged that
immigration be halted for a few years until the colonies of foreign minorities had been
broken up and absorbed in the social structure. The melting pot had failed to melt,
charged many restrictionists, and there had to be a breathing spell during which aliens
were cleansed of their foreign customs and languages and were taught American patterns of thought and speech. It is interesting to note that the majority of Americans
did not view this melting pot as a process of cultural fusion by which each immigrant
group contributed its share to a national mosaic. Rather it was generally believed to
be a smelting process in which the immigrant was stripped of his old-world characteristics and recast in a standard American mold.
Robert A. Divine, American Immigration Policy, 1924–1952. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957, pp. 7–8.
Congress in support of the bill. Other antiimmigrant groups joined in and the nativist instincts of the general public
prevailed. The outcome was the passage
of the Immigration Act of 1924, also
known as the National Origins Act.
The changes ushered in by the National
Origins Act were dramatic. The law cut
annual Italian immigration from 42,000 a
year to 4,000. Polish immigration was cut
from 31,000 to 6,000 and Greek immigration from 3,000 to 100. Meanwhile, the
quotas allowed about 51,000 immigrants
from Germany, 34,000 from Great Britain,
and 28,000 from Ireland. In all, 86 percent
of the immigrants allowed into the country every year would now come from
northern Europe. Only 11 percent were
from eastern and southern Europe, and
about 2 percent from Africa, Australia,
and the Middle East. The act also prevented all Japanese, Indian, and other
Asians from moving to the United States.
While limiting immigrants from specific countries, the government also established guidelines to control the kinds of
people who would be allowed even under the restrictive conditions. For example, the mothers, fathers, wives, and
children of adult aliens were given prior-
42 ■ Twentieth-Century Immigration to the United States