During the 1920s, the United States sharply restricted
foreign immigration for the first time in its history. Large
inflows of foreigners long had created a certain amount of
social tension, but most had been of Northern European stock
and, if not quickly assimilated, at least possessed a certain
commonality with most Americans. By the end of the 19th century,
however, the flow was predominantly from southern and Eastern
Europe. According to the census of 1900, the population of the
United States was just over 76 million. Over the next 15 years,
more than 15 million immigrants entered the country.
Around two-thirds of the inflow consisted of
"newer"
nationalities and ethnic groups–Russian Jews, Poles, Slavic
peoples, Greeks, southern Italians. They were non-Protestant,
non-"Nordic," and, many Americans feared, nonassimilable. They
did hard, often dangerous, low-pay work – but were accused of
driving down the wages of native-born Americans. Settling in
squalid urban ethnic enclaves, the new immigrants were seen as
maintaining Old World customs, getting along with very little
English, and supporting unsavory political machines that catered
to their needs. Nativists wanted to send them back to Europe;
social workers wanted to Americanize them. Both agreed that they
were a threat to American identity.
Halted by World War I, mass immigration resumed in 1919, but
quickly ran into determined opposition from groups as varied as
the American Federation of Labor and the reorganized Ku Klux
Klan. Millions of old-stock Americans who belonged to neither
organization accepted commonly held assumptions about the
inferiority of non-Nordics and backed restrictions. Of course,
there were also practical arguments in favor of a maturing
nation putting some limits on new arrivals.
In 1921, Congress passed a sharply restrictive emergency
immigration act. It was supplanted in 1924 by the Johnson-Reed
National Origins Act, which established an immigration quota for
each nationality. Those quotas were pointedly based on the
census of 1890, a year in which the newer immigration had not
yet left its mark. Bitterly resented by southern and Eastern
European ethnic groups, the new law reduced immigration to a
trickle. After 1929, the economic impact of the Great Depression
would reduce the trickle to a reverse flow – until refugees from
European fascism began to press for admission to the country.
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