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enacted a Federal program of comprehensive immigration reform that barred the entry of
certain categories of aliens and provided for the deportation of those who had entered the
nation illegally. The Immigration Act of 1917 and its amendments created the Asiatic
Barred Zone encompassing most of the Pacific islands and East Asia from which no
immigrants would be allowed entry. Literacy tests were adopted and émigrés could be
excluded on the basis of economic, mental, physical and moral standards or on the basis
of political ideologies. The 1921 Emergency Quota or National Origins Act limited
immigration to three percent of a particular nationality based on the 1910 census or
approximately 375,000 per year. This Act was driven by nativist fears of Eastern and
Southern European immigrants and of the “Red Scare” (the importation of Bolshevism). 58
The Johnson-Reed or National Origins Act of 1924 adjusted the quota to two percent of a
nationality based on the 1890 U.S census. Initially 164,000 foreigners would be admitted
per year but by 1927 annual immigration would be reduced to 150,000 per year with the
greatest percentage allocated to the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany.
Limitations were not placed on Canada or Latin American but all Asians were denied
entry and restrictions were placed on Southern and Eastern Europeans and Russians.
58 James T. Kimer, “Landmarks in U.S. Immigration Policy” NACLA Report on the Americas 39, no. 1
(July/August 2005), 34. Eugenicists, who believed in a biological racial hierarchy, helped formulate the
1921 Act. They believed that “severe restriction of immigration [was] essential to prevent the deterioration
of American civilization….The ‘melting pot’ theory [was] a complete fallacy…because it suggest[ed] that
impurities and baser qualities [were] eliminated by the intermingling of races, whereas they are likely to be
increased.” “Eugenicists Dread Tainted Aliens,” New York Times, September 25, 1921, 1. For more
information regarding this topic see the works of Charles B. Davenport, Director of the Eugenics Record
Office, Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Francis Galton and Madison Grant. See also, Edwin Black, War
Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (NY: Four Walls Eight
Windows, 2003).
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