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I updated this post in 2024 as I was writing The Woman in the Newsroom. It now explains why Ruth needed to involve herself in the fight for an open U.S. Immigration policy.
U.S. Immigration History’s Dual Nature
If you read The Girl From Saint Petersburg, you’ve seen I included Emma Lazarus’s famous poem, The New Colossus, in the beginning. I love this poem and have always found it intriguing. It’s welcoming, yet imposing nature. Just like the Statue itself. I went to the Statue of Liberty on a class field trip in the fourth grade. The Statue’s face freaked me out. How could this welcoming “symbol” have such an unfriendly looking face? As an adult, I now find the statue’s “split personality” to be that much more intriguing and symbolic of U.S. Immigration History itself.
Yes, the Statue carries Lazurus’s famous lines. They’re synonymous with U.S. immigration history. We’re the Melting Pot Nation, right? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But how much of that is true? Did we really welcome ALL immigrants with open arms?
Our TRUE U.S. Immigration History
In reality, many would view U.S. immigration history as biased. Our nation’s complicated welcoming/exclusionary stances go far further back than many of us realize. Immigration limits began as far back as 1790. That is when Congress passed the first law dictating that only free white people of “good character” living in the U.S. for two years or longer could apply for citizenship.
The years following stirred up more distrust as immigrants from different parts of Europe continued to arrive. Divisions began and America’s first anti-immigrant political party formed by 1849. They drummed up support for the states to pass their own anti-immigration laws. But the Supreme Court overturned them in 1875, declaring only the federal government could make and enforce immigration laws.
Then the REAL Exclusions began…
The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. This was the first act in U.S. immigration history to place broad restrictions on a certain group. However, it was far from the last. By 1891, immigration policies expanded to exclude polygamists, people convicted of certain crimes, and the sick and diseased. The Federal Office of Immigration also began along with stationing immigration inspectors at all ports of entry.
Xenophobia reached new heights at the start of the World Wars. The U.S. wanted no trouble and turned insular. The Immigration Act of 1917 established a literacy requirement for all immigrants and halted almost all immigration from Asian countries completely.
Where The Girl in the Newsroom Begins
Harding became president in January of 1921. Soon after he proposed a national quota system. The Immigration Restriction Act (also called the Emergency Quota Act) passed as a temporary measure in 1921. However, it proved to be the “turning point” in U.S. immigration history.
For the first time it added numerical limits on immigration and created the use of a calculating quota system called the National Origins Formula. Harding became president in January of 1921. Soon after he proposed a national quota system. The Immigration Restriction Act (also called the Emergency Quota Act) passed as a temporary measure in 1921. However, it proved to be the “turning point” in U.S. immigration history. For the first time it added numerical limits on immigration and created the use of a calculating quota system called the National Origins Formula.The system calculated and allowed new immigrants into the country based on the number of current immigrants with those origins currently in the United States. Therefore, the formula favored Northern and Western European countries allowing immigrants from these areas to account for 70% of the issued visas.
Politicians, journalists (like Ruth), religious leaders, you name it, all fought against the Immigration Restriction Act. However, they renewed the Act each year. In 1924, the Immigration Act became a permanent law with additional restrictions.
The 1924 Immigration Restriction Act
The finalized law not only continued to heavily favor Northern and Western European countries, it also lowered the existing calculating quotas! They pushed back the origin year the calculations used. Instead of calculating from current numbers of immigrants in the country, the quota was calculated based off the number in the country in 1890. This further biased against immigrants from other parts of the world. The Act also established a new U.S. Border Patrol to crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the borders from Mexico and Canada.
The quota system remained in place until 1965 when Lyndon Johnson overturned it with a new seven-category preference system. He called the old quota system “unAmerican,” and said the new bill would correct a “cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation.”
U.S. Immigration Today
My last installment of Ruth’s story will take place during the time of this quota system and initial resistance. As I’ve begun research for it, my stomach has turned at the horrors we allowed in refusing refugees from Holocaust concentration camps etc.
I’m appreciative of Johnson’s apology, but I find myself still wondering at the complexities of our system. How much better are we doing? Will we ever have an immigration system that is truly equitable and fair? And most importantly, will we ever have an agreed upon definition of what it means to be an American?
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