Immigration: Viewpoints

The First World War slowed immigration to the U.S. but, after the armistice, mass immigration resumed,
reaching 805,000 in 1921. Various events after World War I, such as the recession of 1920 to 1921, the
First Red Scare, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the furor surrounding the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti,
and organized opposition to immigration intensified the "clash of cultures." The Emergency Quota Act of
1921 limited immigration to 3% of the number of immigrants of any particular country that had been
living in the United States in 1910. Three years later, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924. This
law restricted new arrivals to just2% of foreign-born residents according to the Census of 1890, when the
number of "new" immigrants was relatively small. As a result, immigration law all but eliminated the flow
of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and it effectively excluded all immigration from most of
Asia until WWII. By 1928 immigration had declined to about 300,000.

Opposing Views on Immigration Restriction: Selected Quotes

Quote 1: John E. Milholland “Immigration Hysteria in Congress” The Forum, January 1921
Milholland was an Irish-American newspaperman and treasurer of the NAACP. In May 1921, Congress passed the first
immigration restriction law in U.S. history.

“From East to West, the cry of every farmer, every contractor and employer is for labor—labor to sow and to reap and to
gather into barns, labor for the public works, the [machine] shops, and for a thousand other forms of our activity. This
labor must be found somewhere. . . . People must be fed. Crops must be raised. . . . Andrew Carnegie once said that every
immigrant was worth $5000 to the country. Checking immigration is a menace to prosperity.”

Quote 2: Calvin Coolidge, State of the Union Address, 1925

“While our country numbers among its best citizens many of those of foreign birth, yet those who now enter in violation of
our laws by that very act thereby place themselves in a class of undesirables. Investigation reveals that any considerable
number are coming here in defiance of our immigration restrictions, it will undoubtedly create the necessity for the
registration of all aliens. We ought to have no prejudice against an alien because he is an alien...Restrictive immigration is
to a large degree for economic purposes. It is applied in order that we may not have a larger annual increment of good
people within our borders than we can weave into our economic fabric in such a way as to supply their needs without
undue injury to ourselves.”

Quote 3: Langdon Mitchell (poet/playwright) “The New Secession” The Atlantic Monthly August 1926

“We are no longer a homogeneous people. There are some fourteen millions of foreign-born among us, whose ideals are
not ours. When we seek to Americanize them, they tell us in their foreign tongues that the country is as much theirs as
ours, and that they propose to remain themselves, to remain European, and even to Europeanize our social, moral, and
political state of affairs. When we protest, these people accuse us of intolerance. And they are not beside the mark in doing
so, for clearly we do not tolerate them as they are. But, on the other hand, a thing not so often mentioned they do not
tolerate us: our literature, art, morals, habits of life, our ideals, religion, traditions, and the Republic we have created.”

Quote 4: Herbert Hoover, State of the Union Address, 1930

“There is need for revision of our immigration laws upon a more limited and more selective basis, flexible to the
needs of the country. Under conditions of current unemployment it is obvious that persons coming to the United
States seeking work would likely become either a direct or indirect public charge (dependent on the government
or charity for assistance)...I urge the strengthening of our deportation laws so as to more fully rid ourselves of
criminal aliens. Furthermore, thousands of persons have entered the country in violation of the immigration
laws…”
 Immigration: Viewpoints
Quote 5: “America for the Americans” MADISON GRANT Eugenics proponent The Forum, September 1925

The international viewpoint is that America should share its prosperity and the wealth of its citizens with the
world at large and should admit anyone who desires to come here. . . . The aliens in our midst are not
assimilated as it was falsely believed...when the “Myth of the Melting Pot” was enthusiastically accepted and
welcomed...Those who are alien in race and religion have not amalgamated with the native population. They
largely marry among themselves, maintain their religions and customs, and retain their foreign connections and
sympathies almost without abatement. . . . We might as well recognize the fact once for all that, with the
exception of individuals, the great mass of our foreigners remain foreign and will so remain as long as we allow
them to recruit their numbers from abroad. . . .

Newspaper Headlines
The following are headlines regarding immigration laws and opinions from various newspapers
during the 1920s. *Eugenics refers to the science of improving the human race by selective
breeding. Hitler used eugenic ideas to justify his attempt to purge the world of Jews, Catholics,
homosexuals and other “undesirables.”

The New York Times, June 3, 1921 The New York Times, Sept. 25, 1921

Left: Los Angeles Times, Feb. 22, 1923

Right: Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10, 1924

Americanization: The US started taking steps to

“Americanize” immigrants
 Immigration: Viewpoints
● The Federal Bureau of Naturalization organised patriotic 'Americanization Day'
rallies and Fourth of July celebrations.
● The Federal Bureau of Education organised courses on politics and democracy to
prepare immigrants for the 'citizenship exam'.

Above Left: Posters promoting free English classes in

Manhattan’s Lower East Side, 1920
Above Right: English classes at the Ford Motor Company, 1920

Proponents of eugenics believed that various forms of "social inadequacy", including mental illness,
criminality, and physical handicaps, were the result of inherited genetic traits. Some studies, such as
 Immigration: Viewpoints
this one from 1922, attempted to link these tendencies to specific nationalities and ethnic groups,
including people of African and Asian descent and people from Eastern and Southern Europe. This
and other studies provided a "scientific" justification for exclusionary immigration laws like those
passed in 1905, 1921, and 1924. Eugenicists and their political allies argued that "inferior"
immigrants, because of their bad genes, would weaken the nation as a whole.

Opposing Points of View: The Immigration Act of 1924

 Immigration: Viewpoints
Robert H. Clancy, a congressman from Detroit, defended
the Jewish, Italian, and Polish immigrants that comprised
much of his constituency and denounced the quota
provisions of the bill as "un-American." In a speech
before Congress on April 8, 1924, Clancy traces the
history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and
reminds his fellow congressmen that all Americans are of
foreign origin.
Since the foundations of the American commonwealth were
laid in colonial times over 300 years ago, vigorous complaint
and more or less bitter persecution have been aimed at
newcomers to our shores...The “Know-Nothings,” lineal
ancestors of the Ku-Klux Klan, bitterly denounced the Irish and
Germans as mongrels, scum, foreigners, and a menace to our
institutions...But to-day it is the Italians, Spanish, Poles, Jews,
Greeks, Russians, Balkanians, and so forth, who are the racial
lepers... In this bill we find racial discrimination at its worst...
In this bill we find racial discrimination at its worst...To me
real Americanism and the American flag are the product of the
blood of men and of the tears of women and children of a
different type than the rampant “Americanizers” of to-day...I
learned more of the spirit of American history at my mother’s
knee than I ever learned in my four years of high school study
of American history and in my five and a half years of study at
the great University of Michigan. ll that study convinces me
that the racial discriminations of this bill are un-American. . . .
During congressional debate on the 1924 Act,
Senator Ellison DuRant Smith of South Carolina
argued that severe restrictions on immigration were
the best way to preserve American resources.
Although most congressmen were more concerned
with avoiding competition from foreign workers, the
act passed the Senate with only six dissenting votes,
and its guidelines on immigration remained largely
unchanged until 1965.
The time has arrived when we should shut the door. We
have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an
experience just a few years ago, during the great World
War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences
to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in
place of us being the melting pot.
I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us
to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save the
resources of America for the natural increase of our
population. . . .
I do not believe that political reasons should enter into the
discussion of this very vital question. It is of greater
concern to us to maintain the institutions of America, to
maintain the principles upon which this Government is
founded, than to develop and exploit the underdeveloped
resources of the country….Without offense, but with
regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door
and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure
American citizens and develop our own American
resources.