Immigration Act of 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act, or Johnson - Reed Act was a federal law of the United States, the number of immigrants who were allowed to immigrate each year in the U.S. from any country to 2% of the already originating from this country population limited.

Content and meaning

The data basis the 1890 census was used. It concluded Asian workers from immigration, especially Chinese immigrants who do not would be willing to work, and Chinese prostitutes and enhanced the effect of the alien land acts of some Western states, the Japanese Americans prevented them from legally owning land It solved the Emergency Quota Act from 1921. The law was aimed at further restricting the immigration of Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans who immigrated numerous since the 1890s and said East Asians and Indians immigration completely. For immigration from Latin America, no limits were decided.

The law was passed after intense lobbying with the strong support of the Congress. There were only six dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House of Representatives. Most decidedly turned to the newly elected representatives of Brooklyn, Emanuel Celler, against the law. Over the next four decades, Celler made ​​, who was almost half a century the house, the repeal of the law on the subject of a personal crusade.

Some of the staunchest supporters of the law were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and an advocate of eugenics. He tried to prove the superiority of the North European breeds. But most proponents of the law mainly wanted to maintain the ethnic status quo and avoid the competition of foreign workers.

The law stopped unwanted ' immigration with quotas. It included specific origin countries from the Asia -Pacific triangle, such as Japan, China, the Philippines, Laos, Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, Singapore (then a British colony ), Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma ( Myanmar), India, Ceylon ( Sri Lanka) and Malaysia from. It included immigrants from which, as it was thought that an undesirable "race" had.

The effect illustrate a few examples: In the ten years after 1900 every year about 200,000 Italians immigrated. With the enforcement of quotas for 1921 were only allowed to come 4,000 per year. The quota for Germany, however, was about 57,000. 86% of 165,000 arrivals accounted for to the British Isles, France, Germany and other Northern and Western European countries.

With minor modifications, the rates to as Immigration Act of 1965 remained in force.