Immigration Viewpoints.pdf - Immigration: Viewpoints The First World War slowed immigration to the U.S. but after the armistice mass immigration

Immigration: ViewpointsThe First World War slowed immigration to the U.S. but, after the armistice, mass immigration resumed,reaching 805,000 in 1921. Various events after World War I, such as the recession of 1920 to 1921, theFirst Red Scare, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the furor surrounding the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti,and organized opposition to immigration intensified the "clash of cultures." The Emergency Quota Act of1921 limited immigration to 3% of the number of immigrants of any particular country that had beenliving in the United States in 1910. Three years later, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924. Thislaw restricted new arrivals to just2% of foreign-born residents according to the Census of 1890, when thenumber of "new" immigrants was relatively small. As a result, immigration law all but eliminated the flowof immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and it effectively excluded all immigration from most ofAsia until WWII. By 1928 immigration had declined to about 300,000.Opposing Views on Immigration Restriction: Selected QuotesQuote 1: John E. Milholland “Immigration Hysteria in Congress” The Forum, January 1921Milholland was an Irish-American newspaperman and treasurer of the NAACP. In May 1921, Congress passed the firstimmigration restriction law in U.S. history.“From East to West, the cry of every farmer, every contractor and employer is for labor—labor to sow and to reap and togather into barns, labor for the public works, the [machine] shops, and for a thousand other forms of our activity. Thislabor must be found somewhere. . . . People must be fed. Crops must be raised. . . . Andrew Carnegie once said that everyimmigrant was worth $5000 to the country. Checking immigration is a menace to prosperity.”Quote 2: Calvin Coolidge, State of the Union Address, 1925“While our country numbers among its best citizens many of those of foreign birth, yet those who now enter in violation ofour laws by that very act thereby place themselves in a class of undesirables. Investigation reveals that any considerablenumber are coming here in defiance of our immigration restrictions, it will undoubtedly create the necessity for theregistration of all aliens. We ought to have no prejudice against an alien because he is an alien...Restrictive immigration isto a large degree for economic purposes. It is applied in order that we may not have a larger annual increment of goodpeople within our borders than we can weave into our economic fabric in such a way as to supply their needs withoutundue injury to ourselves.”Quote 3: Langdon Mitchell (poet/playwright) “The New Secession” The Atlantic Monthly August 1926