Immigration Act of 1924

About the Author

Representative Albert Johnson (R-WA) and David Reed (R-PA) represented regions of the United States where immigration had become a major issue of contention among their constituents. In Washington, for example, the 1920 census had shown that over 30 percent of the population had been born outside the United States. Pennsylvania had seen a 100 percent increase in its population in the first two decades of the twentieth century, largely as a result of immigration. In response to these changes, the conservative Johnson and Reed pushed out the legislation for the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which aimed to further curtail immigration. They saw immigration as having turned America into a nation for asylum seekers instead of a nation of opportunity. While it was opposed by liberal Democrats in the North, the legislation passed with an overwhelming majority in the House (323–71) and in the Senate (90–6), in large part owing to politically driven xenophobia throughout the United States as well as the growing concern of an economic recession as wages were lowered by incoming immigrant workers.

The bill was signed into law by Calvin Coolidge, who had become president only nine months earlier, after the death of Warren G. Harding. Coolidge had been a strong proponent of America's return to a more moral and economic conservatism. In his first speech to Congress, in December 1923, he had emphasized a need to continue the policy of restricted immigration and even outright had called for the registration of immigrants and the expulsion of those immigrants who opposed such a policy.