The United StatesImmigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of person from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890. It superseded the 1921Emergency Quota Act. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to flood into the country beginning in the 1890s, as well as East Asians and Asian Indians, who were totally prohibited from immigrating. It set no limits on immigration from Latin America.
It passed with strong congressional support (only 6 dissenting votes in the Senate). Some of its strongest supporters were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of a Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and advocate of the racial hygiene theory. His data, which is now considered by some to be flawed, purported to show the superiority of the founding Northern European races.
As an example of its effect, in the ten years following 1900 about 200,000 Italians immigrated every year. With the imposition of the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed. At the same time, the annual quota for Germany was over 57,000. 86% of the 165,000 permitted entries were from the British Isles, France, Germany, and other Northern European countries.
In 1924, America had effectively shut its "Golden Door." Fewer than 350,000 Europeans immigrated to America during the 1930s, and a high percentage of these were political refugees, particularly from nazi Germany and, at the end of the decade, occupied Europe.
Not until the passage of the ImmigrationAct of 1965 was the quota system abolished and relatives of U.S. citizens exempted from most immigration restrictions.
While continuing the discriminatory practices of the immigration laws of the previous three decades, there was the beginning of the shift toward an emphasis on family reunification and occupational skills.
The ImmigrationAct of 1924 created a permanent quota system (that of 1921 was only temporary), reducing the 1921 annual quota from 358,000 to 164,000.
The immigrant shall surrender his immigration visa to the immigration officer at the port of inspection, who shall at the time of inspection indorse on the immigration visa the date, the port of entry, and the name of the vessel, if any, on which the immigrant arrived.
The immigration visa shall be transmitted forthwith by the immigration officer in charge at the port of inspection to the Department of Labor under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Labor.
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