Who Was Shut Out?: Immigration Quotas, 1925–1927
In response to growing public opinion against the flow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the years following World War I, Congress passed first the Quota Act of 1921 then the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act). Initially, the 1924 law imposed a total quota on immigration of 165,000—less than 20 percent of the pre-World War I average. It based ceilings on the number of immigrants from any particular nation on the percentage of each nationality recorded in the 1890 census—a blatant effort to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which mostly occurred after that date. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of 200,000 Italians had entered the United States each year. With the 1924 Act, the annual quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000. This table shows the annual immigration quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act.
Quota Quota Germany 51,227 Poland 5,982 1,100 Great Britain and Northern Ireland 34,007 Italy 3,845 124 Irish Free State (Ireland) 28,567 Czechoslovakia 3,073 121 Sweden 9,561 Russia 2,248 100 Norway 6,453 Yugoslavia 671 100 France 3,954 Romania 603 100 Denmark 2,789 Portugal 503 100 Switzerland 2,081 Hungary 473 100 Netherlands 1,648 Lithuania 344 1,900 Austria 785 Latvia 142 Belgium 512 Spain 131 Finland 471 Estonia 124 Free City of Danzig 228 Albania 100 Iceland 100 Bulgaria 100 Luxembourg 100 Greece 100 Total (Number) 142,483 Total (Number) 18,439 3,745 Total (%) 86.5 Total (%) 11.2 Total (%)
2.3 (Total Annual immigrant quota: 164,667)
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1929), 100.