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Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy

Page history last edited by Mr. Hengsterman 3 years ago

Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy [1907-1927]

An undercurrent of xenophobia and discrimination fuels the Federal Government's
restrictionists efforts to curb immigration and define who is and is not an American

Anti-Immigration With the end of WW I – the need for immigrants in America decreased – restrictions began.

Literacy Test Act (1917); all immigrants over age 16 would be required to pass a literacy test, demonstrating that they could read "not less than 30 nor more than 40" words in English or in "some other language or dialect."

Synthesis: On the Ground in 1865

Hostility toward foreigners was also reflected in a fundamental change in American immigration policy. In 1920, the flow of new immigrants approached pre‐war levels

Emergency Quota Act of 1921 - Set the maximum number of immigrants entering the United States annually at 350,000, apportioned at 3 percent of each nationality living in the country in 1910 (based on the 1910 census).

However, this act still allowed for a significant immigration from southern and eastern Europe, alleged hotbeds of radicalism.

National Origins Act of 1924 reduced the total number of immigrants to 150,000 a year, with quotas set at 2 percent of each nationality's population in the United States in 1890. Under this formula, the quota was less than 4,000 for Italy and around 6,000 for Poland, while the quotas for Great Britain and Germany were 34,000 and 50,000 per year, respectively.

If I were to make a list of the most notorious murder cases in American history, the Sacco and Vanzetti case would certainly make my top ten.

In April of 1920, two payroll guards were gunned during a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts. Police immediately honed in on two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and charged them with murder.

My guest, Susan Tejada, author of "In Search of Sacco and Vanzetti: Double Lives, Troubled Times and the Massachusetts Murder Case That Shook the World", dives into the case in detail. And it's fascinating - from a questionable police investigation, including confusing ballistics evidence, to a biased judge, to an ignored confession, this is a case that caused a world-wide outcry over a failed legal process, which led to the eventual execution of both men.

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