Immigration Act of 1924
According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."
The Immigration Act of 1924 was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere.
The 1924 act supplanted earlier acts to effectively ban all immigration from Asia. Quotas for specific countries were based on 2% of the U.S. population from that country as recorded in 1890.
As a result, populations poorly represented in 1890 were prevented from immigrating in proportionate numbers—especially affecting Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles and other Slavs.
According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."
A key element of the act was its provisions for enforcement. The act provided funding and legal instructions to courts of deportation for immigrants whose national quotas were exceeded.
The provisions of the act were so restrictive that in 1924 more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Chinese, and Japanese left the United States than arrived as immigrants.
The law sharply curtailed immigration from those countries that were previously host to the vast majority of the Jews in America, almost 75% of whom immigrated from Russia alone.
Because Eastern European immigration only became substantial in the final decades of the 19th century, the law's use of the population of the United States in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora lived at the time, impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."
The Immigration Act of 1924 was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere.
The 1924 act supplanted earlier acts to effectively ban all immigration from Asia. Quotas for specific countries were based on 2% of the U.S. population from that country as recorded in 1890.
As a result, populations poorly represented in 1890 were prevented from immigrating in proportionate numbers—especially affecting Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles and other Slavs.
According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."
A key element of the act was its provisions for enforcement. The act provided funding and legal instructions to courts of deportation for immigrants whose national quotas were exceeded.
The provisions of the act were so restrictive that in 1924 more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Chinese, and Japanese left the United States than arrived as immigrants.
The law sharply curtailed immigration from those countries that were previously host to the vast majority of the Jews in America, almost 75% of whom immigrated from Russia alone.
Because Eastern European immigration only became substantial in the final decades of the 19th century, the law's use of the population of the United States in 1890 as the basis for calculating quotas effectively made mass migration from Eastern Europe, where the vast majority of the Jewish diaspora lived at the time, impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924