Immigration

In terms of immigration, the period from 1900 to 1930 witnessed at least three noticeable trends. The first 14 years of the century brought with them the highest levels of arrival in the long wave of immigration that lasted approximately from 1830 to 1914. During this 80-year period, more than 22 million immigrants arrived in the United States, with some six million alone arriving during the decade from 1900 to 1910. Along with this steady increase in the volume of immigration to the United States between 1900 and 1914 came a dramatic and noticeable shift in the origins of immigrants. The third significant factor in immigration between 1900 and 1930 was that in the two decades after 1910 there was a sharp decline in the total number of immigrants arriving. The ending of the open door for immigration can be attributed first to the onset of World War I and, secondly, to the passage of restrictive immigration legislation in the early 1920s. Combined, these two factors effectively closed the door to immigration and brought migration worldwide to a virtual standstill.

The steady stream of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the century were often the victims of nativist attacks, especially during the world war. Despite the common image of immigrants flooding the country, immigrants did not account for the sharp rise in the nation’s population by 1930. Instead, natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) represented the main factor contributing to the population gains. From the Civil War to the First World War, only about 13 to 15 percent of the U. S. population were foreign-born. Although the number of newcomers accounted for about 40 percent of the nation’s total population growth, the American-born children of immigrants were a major factor in the total population growth. Thus as the United States witnessed major economic changes with the advent of industrialization and urbanization, immigrants, especially given their different origins after 1890, often became the scapegoat for social problems in the growing nation. Without a doubt, immigrants played a central role in the industrialization of the American economy. The availability of industrial work furthered the attraction of the United States to migrants from across the globe. Arriving in urban industrial centers, immigrants often had few other choices but to find employment as unskilled factory workers. The size of the industrial workforce grew dramatically from 4,252,000 in 1889 to 7,036,000 by the eve of World War I.

A family of immigrants looks out to the Statue of Liberty from

Ellis Island. (Library of Congress)

Major Sources of Immigrants to the United States, 1901-1930 (thousands by decade)

Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D. C.: GPO, 1975).

Mass production industry brought significant changes to Europe as well. Accordingly, new and more efficient forms of transportation reached further into Europe, allowing eastern and southern Europeans to more easily migrate. In 1854, of the 427,000 immigrants entering the United States, more than 400,000 originated in Northwest Europe (e. g., Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland). By 1907, when some 1.2 million immigrants came to the United States, more than 900,000 were from Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans. While overall the percentage of foreign-born individuals in the total population remained virtually unchanged between 1860 and 1914, the percentage of immigrants and their American-born children throughout the Northeast and Midwest often exceeded 70 percent in cities like Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

The new immigration faced hostility from nativist organizations like the Immigration Restriction League in 1894. Under its influence, members of Congress proposed various grounds for excluding immigrants, ranging from radical political views (e. g., anarchists) to illiteracy. Arguing that “the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities,” Congress in 1902 indefinitely extended the Chinese Exclusion Act’s ban on Chinese immigration. Other laws soon followed that established new grounds, ranging from radical political views (implemented in the Anarchist Immigration Act of 1903) to marriage, on which to restrict entry and even rescind citizenship rights. The Expatriation Act of 1907, for example, stripped citizenship status from women, whether they were native-born or naturalized, if they married foreign nationals. An Asiatic Barred Zone, which cemented into place bars to immigration from all Asian countries except Japan and the Philippines, then an American protectorate, was declared in 1917. With this legislation, the federal government set the precedent of using race, as determined by nationality, as the basis for denying entry to the United States.

The vocal anti-immigrant sentiments of this time period ultimately pushed Congress in 1907 to appoint a commission to investigate issues related to immigration. Headed by Senator William P Dillingham of Vermont, a moderate restrictionist, the committee ultimately issued a 42-volume report. Playing on growing anti-immigrant sentiment, the report’s conclusions were not supported by the evidence amassed by immigration officials across the United States. The commission argued that the so-called new immigrants were racially inferior to the old immigrants from northern and western Europe. Manipulating statistical data, it provided a “scientific” argument calling for legislation to restrict entry to the United States. In essence, the commission’s contention that the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were incapable of becoming Americans found a welcome audience, especially as hostilities in Europe broke out in 1914. The Immigration Act of 1917, passed during World War I, was the first in a series of increasingly restrictive immigration policies that the Congress ultimately adopted in response to the Dillingham Commission. The 1921 Quota Act and the 1924 National Origins Act, with their use of restrictive quotas, cemented the commission’s recommendations into national policy.

Although the main focus of immigration policy after 1900 was on restricting entry from Europe and Asia, countries within the Western Hemisphere also contributed significant numbers of newcomers. Because the borders between Canada, Mexico, and the United States remained open, they allowed for the relatively easy movement of migrants among the nations. Only with the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act did the federal government create an agency (the Border Patrol) specifically charged with the policing of the land borders between the United States and its northern and southern neighbors. Although today the border between Mexico and the United States receives far more attention, between 1900 and 1930 more immigrants entered the United States from Canada than from Mexico. Nonetheless, both nations became more important as sources of immigration after the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, which excluded them from its restrictions.

See also Americanization; nativism.

Further reading: John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1991); Mai Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Immigrants and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2004); Lucy Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigration and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

—David R. Smith

And traditional open door immigration and vetoed the law. Congress overrode his veto. The Immigration Act of 1917 would stand as the major piece of federal policy governing immigration to the United States until more restrictive policies were enacted in the 1920s.

Further reading: John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988).

—David R. Smith