National Origins System

Historical Development

While efforts to restrict immigration to the United States extend to the 1830s, wholesale efforts to limit admissions did not begin until the latter part of the 19th century. Early efforts sought to exclude “undesirables”—such as convicts, sexual deviants, and the mentally ill—from the larger immigrant pool. As the flow of immigrants shifted from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe, calls for immigration restrictions emerged. Seen largely as inferior to their northern and western European cousins, the often swarthier, olive-skinned newcomers (such as Slavs, Italians, and Jews) were of concern especially to the adherents of the newly emerging area of pseudoscientific inquiry known as eugenics. Concerns about their “poor racial stock” and the evils that could result by allowing them into the United States were voiced by Immigration Restriction League founder Prescott Hall, as well as by members of the American Breeders Association and the Eugenics Record Office, among others.

Opposition to immigration from southern and eastern Europe was heightened by economic recession, labor unrest, anti-Catholic sentiment, and events surrounding World War I. Fears that southern and [Page 938]eastern Europeans were unassimilable were intensified by persistent ties to the “old world” among even the earliest immigrant groups during World War I.

With the restrictionist sentiment building, efforts to restrict immigration ensued. Indeed, it became the main mission of the Immigration Restriction League. Formed in 1894 by Harvard graduates, the League had its political allies, including Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (later a member of the influential Dillingham Commission), who in 1896 introduced an immigration bill requiring all immigrants to read forty words in any language as a condition for entry. Although the bill passed Congress, it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897 on the grounds that it contradicted traditional American values. This pattern was repeated three times—vetoed by President Taft and then by President Wilson (1915 and 1917). Yet Congress was able to successfully override Wilson's 1917 veto, making literacy requirements another provision of U.S. immigration law. Similarly, legislation containing quota restrictions was introduced over several legislative sessions before achieving success in 1921 and 1924.

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