How was society affected by immigration - 1917-80

Open door policy before WW1

• Only 3 Acts to restrict types of immigrants allowed into the country → the disabled to anyone Chinese (1882)

• No restrictions placed on yearly numbers of immigrants

• Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe → 1882 - 13% → 1907 - 81%

1911 Dillingham Commission

• Immigration posed a serious threat to American society and culture

• Findings used to justify the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which set limits on the numbers of immigrants

US urban population who were foreign-born or had foreign-born parents

• 1910 - 74%

• 1920 - 85%

1917 Immigration Act

• Lists a number of ‘undesirable’ immigrants to be excluded, including homosexuals, insane persons and criminals

• Imposes a literacy qualification for anyone over 16

1921 Emergency Quota Act

• Restricts yearly number of immigrants to 3% of the total number of people from that country living in the USA in 1910

1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act

• Changes quota system to 2% of people from the country of origin in the 1890 census until 1927 → tipped balance further in favour of northern Europe

• After that, the number of immigrants was to be fixed at 150,000 and the quota was to be based on the 1920 census

1929 National Origins Formula

• Confirms 150,000 limit

• Bans Asian immigrants altogether

Mexicans deported during the Depression

400,000

Foreign-language newspapers

• 1914 - 1300

• 1960 - 75

Foreign-born Ford workers in 1914

70.7%

Japanese put in internment camps in WW2

• 120,000

• 75% US citizens

1948 Displaced Persons Act

Allows for immigration of 415,000 people displaced by the war over 4 years, but within the quota limit

Cuban Refugee Program

• After Castro seized power in 1959, 200,000 Cubans fled to the USA

• CRP set up to deal with numbers

‘A Nation of Immigrants’

• Book written by Kennedy in 1958

• Said the USA had been a nation of wave after wave of immigrants

1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

• Abolished quotas

• Sets limit of 170,000 immigrants a year and allows for more Asian immigration

• Immediate family members of US citizens allowed in outside this limit

• Doesn’t apply to western hemisphere

• Preference for family reunification, skilled workers and refugees

Impact of 1965 Act on Asian immigrants

In the 5 years after the 1965 Act, immigration from Asia quadrupled

Immigrants fleeing communism

• After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the USA took in 130,000 Vietnamese refugees

• As communism spread, the USA passed additional refugee legislation to take more refugees in → by 1985, there were over 700,000 of them

Central and Southern American immigrants

Immigration and Naturalisation Service began to try to control immigration by deporting illegal immigrants from Southern and Western states in Operation Wetback in 1954

1976 Immigration and Nationality Act

• Expands to include the western hemisphere for the first time

• 20,000 limit on entry into the USA

Illegal immigrants

• Around 60,000 illegal Mexican immigrants a year in the 1970s

• In the 1970s, 1/3 of jobs created in Los Angeles County were taken by Mexicans

• In 1980, about 1 million illegal aliens were deported

• The INS in the mid-1970s estimated there were about 7 million illegal immigrants in the USA → they were finding and deporting about 600,000 a year

1980

• 14 Cuban refugees died on a boat that capsized

• Officials could not STOP THE BOATS