Coming To America Pt. 4: The Dawn of the Modern Immigration Policy.
1920–1960: World Wars, the National Origins Formula, and the Man that Fought Against the Exclusionary American Immigration Policy.
Immigration and the Impact of Global Instability:
From 1920–1960, immigration decreases significantly to just over 6 million in the 40 years. Northern Europeans make up approximately 50% of immigrants in this period, which as we will see is largely the result of specific immigration policy. These decades also marked the first notable migration from the western hemisphere, with 35% of immigrants originating from the western hemisphere.
What led to the shifts? The disruption of two World Wars, Red Scares (1917–1920; 1947–1957), and the Great Depression, prompted greater concern about national and economic security during this time, which subsequently ramps anti-immigration fears. As has been the recurring theme, it’s virtually guaranteed that war and economic insecurity will always result in xenophobia. These fears led to more and less extreme measures during these wartime and economically devastating times. For example:
- Between 1919 and 1921, twenty states passed “Americanization” programs designed to educate immigrants in American customs, language, and values.
- During WWII, approximately 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry were interned in camps without due process, even though roughly two-thirds were American citizens.
Furthermore, the hunt for communists and “Bolsheviks” that becomes an American obsession in the 20th century ratchets up anti-immigrant bias leading to a series of anti-immigrant legislation such as:
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921
This bill utilized immigration quotas for the first time in U.S. history based on the National Origin Formula. The 1921 formula set quotas for countries totaling 3% of that nationality residing in the United States as of 1910. It also wholly banned any Eastern Asian immigration. Even though the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was still in effect, immigration from Japan had increased to the chagrin of nativists, so this legislation provided the perfect opportunity to stifle it.
Immigration Act of 1924
This act revised quotas to further preference northern European immigration. The new national origins formula dictated that annual quotas for nationalities were set at 2% of the nationality’s population in the States in 1890, which was before a large amount of the immigration from countries deemed particularly undesirable. As a result of this legislation, Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany accounted for 70% of the available visas at the time. The Act did not set any quotas for immigrants from the western hemisphere, so immigrants from the America’s and Caribbean were not subject to quotas. Also, immigrants deemed professionals were also not counted against quotas and were admitted regardless.
Labor Appropriation Act of 1924
With this legislation, Congress establishes the border patrol to curb the illegal immigration of eastern Asians who cannot obtain visas due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Quota Act of 1921. These immigrants would seek to gain entry most often by crossing the Mexican-American border. This legislation is an excellent early example of what the scholar Alvaro Llosa called “…the unreality of the law — its tendency to try to determine, rather than reflect, the ebb and flow of human society, and to mold that flow to the whims of law, which are often the result of passionate native reactions to what they perceive and fear.”[1] Llosa contends that many of the United States’ attempts to craft exclusionary immigration policy have been based on “…the premise that foreigners are incompatible with the host society” and have created unintended consequences that later had to be “fixed” with policy. In this case, the criminalization of an otherwise natural movement of people according to economic and socio-cultural incentives.
The Impact of WWII:
Surprisingly, in many ways, WWII appears to open the United States up to the more free movement of people into the country. Perhaps, this results from the U.S. emerging from the war as the definitive leader on the global stage. Maybe, it’s the result of seeing a horror story in the national populism of Germany, which incited a stronger push for greater international cooperation.
Some other plausible factors are:
1). The increased demand for labor starts contending with nativist sentiments again.
During this period, the government begins the Bracero program to supplement labor shortages with temporary workers from Mexico. While it was active, this program was a relatively good example of allowing legal structures to correspond to real-life market forces. Barriers to entry for Mexican agricultural laborers were lowered, which allowed the free movement of people to meet the labor needs of American industrial farms during this period. The program was ended in the mid-1960s due partially to public concern over poor living conditions of migrant workers in general but primarily due to pressures from domestic unions that felt temporary workers were direct competition. However, the subsequent growth in illegal migratory channels to areas with sizeable labor needs indicated that this artificial constriction of immigration might have been ill-advised. [2]
2). Alliances during the war played a role.
In 1943, the Chinese immigration ban put into place via the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was finally lifted due to China’s status as an ally of the United States against Japan.
3). There’s a pressing need to contend with a post-World War II refugee crisis as political and economic instability span the globe.
The first refugee law is put in place through the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 to address the masses of refugees fleeing a destroyed Europe. While refugees were still subject to the health, literacy, and other requirements of the existing quota system, the act set up a preference category within the country’s quotas for specified categories of displaced persons and established the Displaced Persons Commission to operate it. Beyond the establishment of preference categories, it also allowed some countries to immigrate beyond their quota by borrowing from future years’ quota allotments.[3]
President Truman critiqued the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 for counting refugees toward quotas since this in practice meant that refugee immigration came at the expense of non-refugee immigration. Ultimately, however, the U.S. accepted a sizeable number of refugees during this post-war period from all over the world (Hungarian Revolution, Cuban Revolution, Hong Kong, Jews leaving Europe). All totaled, over 1.6 million refugees are admitted to the states in the aftermath of WWII through 1980.[4]
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act).
Ultimately, these factors led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a piece of legislation considered by some scholars to be the exoskeleton of all modern immigration policy with all significant subsequent pieces of immigration policy (1965, 1976, 1986, 1990) being amendments of this act. The act:
- Included grounds for the exclusions of immigrants based on health, criminal, moral, economic, and subversive criteria. Since it was passed amidst the second Red Scare (1947–1957) and in the fervor of McCarthyism, the act was highly concerned with preventing the immigration of communists or anarchists.
2. Relaxed some of the more exclusionary restrictions of the quota system by:
- Allocating token quotas to countries within the Asian-Pacific Triangle (a region from Afghanistan to Japan, Mongolia to Indonesia, and the Pacific Islands). However, the sum of all quotas allocated for this region was 2,000, and Japan possessed the largest cap of 138.
- Adding the preference system into the existing quota system. 20% of a country’s quota was set aside for immigrants with relatives that were U.S. citizens, and 50% of the quota was reserved for immigrants with valued labor skills.
- Repealing the last of the racial and nationality barriers to U.S. Citizenship, thus creating a uniform standard for naturalization. From 1790–1870, only “free white persons” were eligible for citizenship per the Naturalization Act of 1790. In 1870, ‘persons of African descent” were made eligible by Congress, leaving all others excluded from citizenship until the passage of McCarran-Walter.
Truman’s Response
Despite his reputation as a president that was tough on communism and McCarran-Walter being written to prevent the immigration of foreign communists and anarchists, Harry S. Truman vetoed the bill. Why? Because it continued and even expanded the national origins quota system created in the 1920’s immigration legislation, a system to which he was opposed. In his veto message, Truman lays out several reasons for his opposition to the McCarran-Walter bill and the immigration system it propagated.
1). The quota system restricted immigration far below where it would naturally be, which was likely to constrain economic growth.
“Taking into account the growth in population since 1920, the law does not allow us but one-tenth of one percent of our total population. And since the largest national quotas are only partly used, the number actually coming is has been in the neighborhood of one-fifteenth of one percent. This is far less than we must have in the years ahead to keep up with the growing needs of the Nation for manpower to maintain the strength and vigor of our economy.”
2). The new grounds for deportation were excessively punitive and granted too much discretionary power to the government.
“Some of the new grounds of deportation which the bill would provide are unnecessarily severe. Defects and mistakes in admission would serve to deport at any time[…]narcotic drug addicts would be deportable at any time, whether the addition was curable, and whether or not cured. […]These provisions are worse than the infamous Alien Act of 1798, passed in a time of national fear and distrust of strangers, which gave the President the power to deport any alien deemed ‘dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.’ Alien residents were thoroughly frightened and citizens much disturbed by that threat to liberty. Such powers are inconsistent with our democratic ideals.”
3). Ultimately, his primary reason was that he believed the continuation of the quota system was not only morally wrong but the antithesis of everything that America defined itself by.
“The idea behind this discriminatory policy was, to put it baldly, that Americans with English or Irish names were better people and better citizens than Americans with Italian or Greek or polish names. It was thought that people of West European origin made better citizens than Romanians or Yugoslavs or Hungarians or Balts or Austrians. Such a concept is utterly unworthy of our traditions and our ideals. It violates the great political doctrine of the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal.’ It denies the humanitarian creed inscribed beneath the Statue of Liberty proclaiming to all nations. ‘Give me your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’
It repudiates our basic religious concepts, our belief in the brotherhood of man, and in the words of St. Paul that ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free…for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’
In no other realm of our national life are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration. We do not limit our cities to their 1920 boundaries — we do not hold our corporations to their 1920 capitalizations — we welcome progress and change to meet changing conditions in every sphere of life, except in the field of immigration…”
However, Truman’s passion for a reformed system was overruled, and on June 27, 1952, Congress passed the bill over his veto. Not to be dismayed, Truman created the Commission on Immigration and Naturalization to study the immigration system soon after the bill’s passing. The commission’s 319-page report completed in 1953 advocated the termination of the national origins quota system and proposed a flat quota system that did not take nationality, race, or religion into account. Though the subsequent three Presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, all supported the proposals outlined in the report and made a concerted effort to produce reforms, it would take over a decade before any bills would successfully pass. The era of modern immigration had begun.
[1] Llosa, A.V. Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America. 2013. P. 88
[2] See Harvest of Shame by Edward R. Murrow
[3] Lemay, M. Guarding the Gates. P. 146–147
[4] Lemay, M. Guarding the Gates. P. 25
[5] Truman’s full veto message: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/182/veto-bill-revise-laws-relating-immigration-naturalization-and-nationality
