After World War I, isolationist America was revitalized. The horrors of war had a lasting effect on Americans, and many reminisced on times before the war. Wilson had promised to stay out of the war, but was ultimately sucked in. Americans felt it was time for a break in foreign relations. However, America would be unable to avoid foreign influence because floods of immigrants were now traveling to America after the bloody war. From 1920-1921, around 800,000 immigrants, mostly from southern and eastern Europe, moved to America. Americans were obviously unhappy with this flood of immigrants, since it brought noxious foreign influences along, and soon the American government would take action.
In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, temporarily reducing the number of immigrants. The quota was based on the amount of people from each nationality already living in America in 1910, and allowed three percent of that population to enter every year. For example if there were 3 million Italians in the United States in 1910, only 90,000 could enter in 1921. This method of regulation was more favorable to southern and eastern Europeans like Italians and Germans because many of them were already in the country.
In 1924, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 was replaced by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act further limited the number of immigrants that could enter by lowering the quotas to 2 percent. Now only 60,000 Italians would be allowed. Also, the new act shifted the consensus that would be used to determine that amount of people that could enter from 1910 to 1890. Unfortunately for southern and eastern Europeans, there was a substantially less amount of them in America around 1890. Many saw this move as racial discrimination and evidence that America wanted to maintain a population that was blue-eyed northern Europeans, which was in part true. Another discriminatory aspect of the 1924 act was its outright ban of Japanese Immigrants.
Both of these acts signaled a change in American immigration policies. Before the war there had been an unrestricted flow of immigrants that brought about 35 million of them over. When the acts were in place, less than a million immigrants came over from 1931-1940. This was a drastic change in the rate of immigration. By 1931, more immigrants left than arrived in the first in American history. America's image as the land of opportunity was now tainted. In an effort to halt immigration, America sacrificed freedom and ethnic diversity. However, these acts would not last forever, and eventually immigration rates would rise again.
Sources:
"U.S. Immigration Legislation: 1921 Emergency Quota Law." U.S. Immigration Legislation: 1921 Emergency Quota Law. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.
"U.S. Immigration History | U.S. Immigration Policy - Environmental Impact Statement |." U.S. Immigration Policy. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.
I think that it would be very interesting to add a sentence in the second to last paragraph that talks about how long the ban went on. I did a bit of research into this and I could not tell when the United states started to allow any number of people to immigrate but I did find that from 1927-1952 the 2% law was replaced with an overall cap of 150,000 immigrants annually.
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ReplyDeleteAt the end you could also talk briefly about how the rates of immigration would eventually rise again. For example, you can mention the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which established a new immigration system that focused on reuniting families and attracting skilled labor.
ReplyDeleteLink: http://library.uwb.edu/static/USimmigration/1965_immigration_and_nationality_act.html
The harsh immigration policies such as the 2% from the 1924 immigration act remind me of Trumps views on immigration so I kinda see a present day connection to this. You could add to the immigration act paragraph that it banned arabs and asians.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Quick clarification question, when you said, " This method of regulation was more favorable to southern and eastern Europeans like Italians and Germans because many of them were already in the country," I think you meant that the method was more favorable to western Europeans (British, Irish, German) because those people had been here longer. I also have a question about the Emergency Quota Law, do you think it was made intentionally to benefit certain groups? I could see not wanting very much immigration, but would there have been a benefit to limiting immigration from certain places more than others?
ReplyDeleteSources:
Textbook ("Founders of America-The Germans/Irish")