Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Immigration Act of 1924
After World War I, many Americans believed that immigrants took away jobs and increased the unemployment rate. With the increasing fear of radicals, the WASP wanted to get rid of the non-Americans. The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson and Reed Act) is a federal law passed to limit the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. The law limited the number of immigrants from each nationality to 2% of the total population in the US. This law was created specifically to aim at certain European groups such as the Italians, Greek, Slaves, and Jews. Furthermore, virtually all Asians were banned from immigrating to the US. The Japanese government protested against the law, but the US refused to listen. According to the government, the act is "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity". The Immigration Act of 1924 was later replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
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6 comments:
I think it is extremely hypocritical of Americans to dislike immigrants, because after all, the original Americans themselves were immigrants that came and colonized the land. We took away the rights to the land that belonged to the Native Americans.
One aspect of this that I don't understand is why the US would hurt themselves by limiting the immigrants that join the workforce. It is obvious from projects like the Panama Canal that immigrants were taken advantage of and exploited for their cheap manual labor, and that the Americans benefited off of them. It doesn't make sense as to why they would potentially be hindering their ability to complete big projects requiring manual labor that fueled the country. Even though there already were immigrants, the amount of jobs available in industries had to have been growing, creating the need for more workers.
Also, I think this shows how greedy the Americans were because they decided that they were going to restrict others from coming to the land that they once also immigrated to. The Natives were the true owners of the land, if there were owners, but the "Americans" immigrated, took a lot of things from the Natives, and began making everything their own.
Something that may be increasingly interesting would be how this mentality affected immigrants as the Great Depression ravaged American society. It is very intriguing to read about the racism that has persisted throughout American history and has continually oppressed many groups of minorities, even though the ideals of America have been about equality and freedom.
Very descriptive and concise explanation of the legislation. Would be interesting to note how this affected the economy, and it if actually helped or worsened the Great Depression.
It's surprising how people constantly think that the US was always pro-immigration. Clearly through the Johnson and Reed Act, The US showed the reality of the nation being a lot more xenophobic than the original ideals the US was built upon.
^Unknown is Franklin
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