National Origins Act of 1924

With Congress’ sights in the 1920s set on legislation that would block “undesirable” immigration, the National Origins Act of 1924 was enacted, establishing a cap on how many immigrants could enter the U.S. under a system that reserved 96% of slots for European immigrants and included a total ban on Asian immigrants.

Less than a decade later, the United States embraced drastic restrictions on immigration through the National Origins Act of 1924.

With its entrance into the First World War, the country started to implement race-based quota systems and other immigration controls, culminating in the passage of the National Origins Act of 1924, which excluded all Asian immigrants and sought to insure that ninety-six per cent of America’s immigration slots were reserved for Europeans.

From the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, to the Naturalization Act of 1790, to the Homestead Act of 1862, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917, to the National Origins Act of 1924, to Executive Order 9066 of 1942, to Executive Order 13769 of 2017, bigotry disguised as nationalism is nothing new.

The split between rural fundamentalists and urban modernists, between recent migrants to the United States from eastern and southern Europe and older assimilated Americans found expression in the National Origins Act of 1924, a discriminatory immigration act.