Historical Background and Contemporary Consequences of the 1924 Immigration Act

The Johnson-Reed Act, better known as the Immigration Act of 1924, had a basic foundation of American immigration policy: it used national origins quotas to reduce largely 'undesired' immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and totally exclude Asian immigrants. The Act was underpinned by the prevailing nativist and xenophobic ethos, driven by the desire to retain the ethnic character of the United States as primarily Anglo-Saxon. The Act set annual quotas at 2 percent of the number of people from each nationality residing in the United States based on the 1890 census—a time period in which Northern and Western Europeans made up the bulk of immigrants.

The shadow cast by the 1924 Act looms long over current disputes regarding immigration. Opponents point out that supposedly similar policies of restriction today are founded upon the same prejudices that have gone into the exclusionary doctrine and risk tearing apart the very fabric of American society. Proponents of more open immigration policies focus on the economic and cultural contributions of immigrants and show how this contrasts to the past, when restrictive laws could have negative effects for many years. The debate surrounding the 1924 Act is applied as a kind of historical prism through which current immigration policy and its wider implications are shed light upon.


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