Restrict Immigration

Restrict Immigration

Compare the arguments used to restrict immigration today to those made in the 1920s and 1850s. What do these arguments express about American anxieties and values? To what extent are such fears rooted in the economy and to what extent are they cultural?

Between 1830 and 1924, over 35 million immigrants reached to the United States from Europe. This so-called \century of immigration" completed rather suddenly in the early 1920s. This provisional legislation was superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924, which not only made the quotas stricter but furthermore calculated them in a kind conceived to favor ...