Background: Immigration Act of 1924

Background: Immigration Act of 1924

New York became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history. 

Immigration legislation began in earnest in the late 19th century, but it was not until after World War I that the era of mass immigration came to an abrupt end. The Immigration Act of 1924 established an annual quota (fixed in 1929 at 150,000) and established the national-origins system, which was to characterize immigration policy for the next 40 years.

Immigration Act of 1924

Nicknames	Johnson-Reed Act
Enacted by	the 68th United States Congress
Effective	May 26, 1924
Legislative history
Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 7995 Passed the House on April 12, 1924  Agreed to by the House on May 15, 1924  and by the Senate on May 15, 1924  Signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on May 24, 19

The law was primarily aimed at further decreasing immigration of specific groups of Europeans, including Italians, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, and Eastern European Jews.The law affirmed the longstanding ban on the immigration of other non-white persons, with the exception of black African immigrants (who had long been exempt from the ban). Thus, virtually all Asians were forbidden from immigrating to America under the Act. Under it, quotas were established for each country based on the number of persons of that national origin who were living in the United States in 1920. The quotas reduced drastically the flow of immigrants from southeastern Europe in favour of the countries of northwestern Europe.  That revised formula reduced total immigration from 357,803 in 1923–24 to 164,667 in 1924–25. The law's impact varied widely by country. Immigration from Great Britain and Ireland fell 19%, while immigration from Italy fell more than 90%. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of 200,000 Italians had entered the United States each year. With the 1924 Act, the annual quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000. 

Northwest Europe and Scandinavia

Eastern and Southern Europe

Other Countries

Country	Quota		Country	Quota		Country	Quota
Germany	51,227		Poland	5,982		Africa (other than Egypt)	1,100
Great Britain and Northern Ireland	34,007		Italy	3,845		Armenia	124
Irish Free State (Ireland)	28,567		Czechoslovakia	3,073		Australia	121
Sweden	9,561		Russia	2,248		Palestine	100
Norway	6,453		Yugoslavia	671		Syria	100
France	3,954		Romania	603		Turkey	100
Denmark	2,789		Portugal	503		Egypt	100
Switzerland	2,081		Hungary	473		New Zealand & Pacific Islands	100
Netherlands	1,648		Lithuania	344		All others	1,900
Austria	785		Latvia	142
Belgium	512		Spain	131
Finland	471		Estonia	124
Free City of Danzig	228		Albania	100
Iceland	100		Bulgaria	100
Luxembourg	100		Greece	100
Total (Number)	142,483		Total (Number)	18,439		Total (Number)	3,745
Total (%)	86.5		Total (%)	11.2		Total (%)

(Total Annual immigrant quota: 164,667)

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1929), 100.

A key element of the Act was its provisions for enforcement. The Act provided funding and legal instructions to courts of deportation for non-white immigrants and Southern and Eastern European immigrants who exceeded their national quotas. Deportations of North African, Arabian, Persian, and East Indian immigrants were sometimes challenged in court with claims that these persons were "white." Initially these immigrants were deported, but by the post-World War II era, with xenophobia on the decline, all of these groups were classified as white under American law. 

The quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965/. The information about these Acts will be demonstrated in the next posts.