Chinese Exclusion Act

Congress reacted to the rising tide of anti-Chinese racism by passing the first law to significantly restrict immigration in 1882.  The Chinese Exclusion Act barred the entry of Chinese immigrants for ten years on the grounds that "the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities."

In 1892 the Act was extended for another ten years and made permanent by the Extension Act of 1904.  However, people continued to find ways to enter the country, especially after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed government immigration records. 

In 1943, with China an ally of the U.S. during World War II, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act.  It permitted 105 Chinese immigrants to enter the country each year.  

By this time other groups were being subjected to strict immigration quotas.  In 1921 Congress limited immigrants to three percent of the number of their nationality living in the U.S. in 1910.  The effect was to cut back severely on numbers coming from eastern Europe, who were believed to threaten the "racial purity" of the stock that had peopled America in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas based on the national origins of the entire population in 1920; this was later moved back to 1890.  The act was hailed as a great "Nordic victory" since it put a very firm brake on "new immigration" from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean .  The national origins of the existing population were determined the sound of their names.  Thus, anyone who had anglicized his or her name was classified as "English," swelling the ranks of resident "Nordics."

The Supreme Court had meanwhile endorsed the notion of a social order based on race by barring Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens in their 1922 ruling in Ozawa v. United States.

America 's faith in a democratic diversity and the free exchange of a multitude of ideas was displaced by the notion that its security depended on a largely homogeneous people all thinking the same way.