Immigration Law of 1924

By: Priscilla Lopez

After World War I, thousands of immigrants continued to come to the United States for work.
Many of the immigrants worked doing hard labor that most Americans would not do. For many years
immigrants from all over Europe and Mexico came to the United States in big numbers. However in the
1920s government began to have a concern for the growing number of immigrants in the United States
because they started to have a strong feeling of nationalism. To limit the immigrants entering the United
States, Congress began to issue a series of quotas. It was not until 1924, that Congress passed an official
act to stop the number of immigrants from growing.

There were many causes why the government decided to pass an immigration law. One of them
being that the number of immigrants was gradually increasing and would soon be higher than the
American population. The act not only limited the number of immigrants coming into the United States, it
also completely stopped Asian immigrants from entering. Another reason was many Americans feared
that communists would migrate to the United States and spread their ideas. During this time, the
communists in Russia were in power and Americans thought that their ideas would spread causing a
revolution in the United States. After World War One, America was in the recession and people thought
that with more immigrants coming into the nation there would not be any jobs left for Americans. The
unemployment rate was a 5.2% and many were afraid that it would rise due to immigrants.

Before the Act of 1924, congress passed a series of quotas to limit immigration. In 1921 congress
passed the Emergency Quota Act to help limit the growing number of immigrants coming into the United
States. Before the Emergency Quota Act, congress had passed the Immigration Act of 1917 but this act
failed to halt the flood of immigrants entering. The 1921 quotas was the first system that limited the
number of immigrants coming to only 3 percent of the population already residing in the United States.
This meant that only 3 out of 100 people of a given nationality were able to enter the United States. The
act mostly affected Europeans who fled Europe after the war. The people believed that to ensure that
there were minimal Bolsheviks, Jews, anarchists, and other undesirable people, the quota should severely
restrict their passage. This quota system significantly reduced the number of immigrants entering the
United States.

With the passage of the 1924 act, there were some consequences, some good and some bad. For
the good, the number of immigrants went down from about eight thousand to three thousand. The
American population is happy about this, but for the immigrants, this certainly can not be well. Less and
less people were able to obtain visas making it impossible to leave their homelands. For most, their
homelands were nearly destroyed because of the war. For many Europeans, this was their story. Jews
were unable to leave Germany which was very unfortunate.

After one of the most gruesome wars, many displaced people decided to make their homes in the
United States. For many years many immigrants came to the United States for a better life for themselves
and their families. Congress tried many times to limit the number of immigrants. They established many
quota systems before passing a law. For many Americans, this was good news because then they would
have a better chance of getting a job. As for the immigrants, they were forced to manage in their
hometowns. The Immigration Act was sure to go down in history.