Immigration Shaping America - Population Reference Bureau

Laissez-Faire, 1780 to
1875
During its first hundred years, the
United States had a laissez-faire policy
toward immigration. Federal, state,
and local governments; private employers;
shipping companies and railroads;
and churches were free to
promote immigration to the United
States. Some federal government
policies indirectly encouraged immigration.
Subsidizing railroad construction,
for example, led to the
recruitment of immigrant workers by
private railroad companies. High tariffs
kept out European goods and thus
created a demand for more workers in
American factories. The federal government
relied on immigrants to staff
the army: Immigrants made up about
one-third of the regular soldiers in the
1840s, and an even higher proportion
of many state militias. 22
This need for labor, combined
with the freedoms established in the
United States, made the new nation a
good place for newcomers. Fears that
immigrants would alter the culture
and customs of the United States
were outweighed by the combination
of people pushing out from an overcrowded
Europe and the waiting
opportunities of the New World.
The Naturalization Act of 1790
established the principle that an
immigrant could acquire citizenship
after several years of residence in the
United States. No fees or admissions
tests were imposed on immigrants
but, after 1819, the federal government
required ship captains to collect
and report data on the immigrants
they brought to the United States.
The big influx of Roman Catholics
from Ireland and Germany in the
1840s set off the “Know Nothing”
movement—the first organized antiforeign
movement in the nation’s history,
embodied in the American Party.
Groups of Protestant clergymen, journalists,
and other opinion leaders
formed the Order of the Star Spangled
Banner within the party to urge
reduced immigration from non-Anglo-
Saxon countries. To maintain secrecy,
members were instructed to answer
any inquiries about the Order with
the words “I know nothing about it.”
The American Party won 70 congressional
seats in the federal election of
1854, but the majority of congressmen
did not respond to the flurry of antiimmigrant
feeling and no restrictions
were imposed. Immigration slowed
before the Civil War and slavery
replaced immigration as the major
political issue of the day.
Qualitative Restrictions,
1875 to 1920
After the Civil War, public attention
turned again to immigration. The
growing numbers of immigrants from
eastern and southern Europe aroused
concerns and fears among the overwhelmingly
Protestant and rural
American populace. Writing in 1901,
Woodrow Wilson, who was later
elected president, shared the popular
antagonism to the immigrants:
“Immigrants poured in as before,
but ... now there came multitudes of
men of the lowest class from the south
of Italy and men of the meanest sort
out of Hungary and Poland, men out
of the ranks where there was neither
skill nor energy nor any initiative of
quick intelligence; and they came in
numbers which increased from year to
year, as if the countries of the south of
Europe were disburdening themselves
of the more sordid and hapless elements
of their population.” 23
The fear of foreigners led to the
imposition of qualitative restrictions
aimed at barring certain types of
immigrants. In 1875, convicts and
prostitutes were barred. The Immigration
Act of 1882 added paupers and
“mental defectives” to those who
could not immigrate to the United
States. And for the first time, it barred
immigration from a particular country—China.
The 1882 act barred Chinese
immigration for 10 years, and
the ban was renewed every decade
until 1943.
Beginning in 1897, Congress
approved legislation stipulating that
only people who could read and
write would be admitted as immi-
17