1. Immigration Restrictions 1780-1924
Background:
Naturalization Act of 1790
“any Alien being a free white person…may be admitted to become a citizen”

2. Alien/Sedition Acts of 1798
Naturalization Act
Residence from 5 to 14 years for citizenship
Alien Enemies Act
Declared war/invasion= jailing/deporting citizens of enemy nation
Alien Act
Prez allowed to deport non-US citizens considered dangerous
Sedition Act
Permitted imprisonment and fines for criticizing gov’t

3. Knights of Labor/ Page Act
Page Act (1875)= Chinese/Japanese/Asian immigration must be “voluntary”
Illegal: Prostitution, Coolie Labor

4. Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
1st major immigration law
No Chinese immigration for 10 years
Chinese can’t be citizens
Why?
Made permanent in 1902

5. Immigration Restrictions
1882 Prohibitions: “convicts, lunatics, idiots or those not able to take care of themselves”
1891 Prohibitions: “idiots, insane persons, paupers, or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists and also any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another”

6. Dillingham Commission (1907-1910)
Immigration Act of 1907 (Progressives)
Congressional committee to investigate immigration
Conclusions
“Conceptual dichotomy”= new/old immigrants
Southern/Eastern Europeans threatened U.S. society
Assessing assimilation:
English, US citizenship, abandoning native customs
Defined immigrant desirability, “superiority or inferiority”
RACE= central (good vs bad immigrants)
Influences advocacy of literacy tests, quotas

7. Literacy Tests (1917) Immigration Restriction League Henry Cabot Lodge
Proposed in 1896
Passed Congress:
1897, 1913, 1915, 1917
Vetoed by Cleveland, Taft, Wilson
Congress overrode veto in 1917
Excluded “aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English language, or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish."

8. Palmer Raids/Deportations (1919)

9. Emergency Quota Act (1921)

10. Johnson-Reed Act/ National Origins Act (1924)