Immigraton Laws Essay - 1572 Words

Immigraton Laws The first immigrants to the territory now the United States were from Western Europe. The first great migration began early in the 19th century when large numbers of Europeans left their homelands to escape the economic hardships resulting from the transformation of industry by the factory system and the simultaneous shift from small-scale to large-scale farming. At the same time, conflict, political oppression, and religious persecution caused a great many Europeans to seek freedom and security in the U.S. The century following 1820 may be divided into three periods of immigration to the U.S. During the first period, from 1820 to 1860, most of the immigrants came from Great Britain, Ireland, and western Germany. In the†¦show more content†¦to work in new industries. A diplomatic agreement made in 1907 by the U.S. and Japan provided that the Japanese government would not issue passports to Japanese laborers intending to enter the U.S.; under the terms of this agreement, the U.S. government refrained until 1924 from enacting laws excluding Japanese aliens. In 1917 Congress passed an immigration law that enlarged the classes of aliens excludable from the U.S.; its basic provisions were, with some changes, retained in later revisions of the immigration law. It imposed a literacy test and included an Asiatic Barred Zone to shut out Asians. Aliens unable to meet minimum mental, moral, physical, and economic standards were excluded, as were anarchists and other so-called quot;subversivesquot;. The Anarchist Act of 1918 expanded the provisions for the exclusion of subversive aliens.(Immigration) After World War I, a marked increase in racism and the growth of isolationist sentiment in the U.S. led to demands for further restrictive legislation. In 1921 a congressional statute provided for a quota system for immigrants, whereby the number of aliens of any nationality admitted to the U.S. in a year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of foreign-born residents of that nationality living in the U.S. in 1910. The law applied to